LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

Class 


THE  LIFE  OF 

GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

BY  HENRY  ADAMS 


THE  LIFE 


OF 


GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HODGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

1911 


COPYRIGHT,   1911,  BY  ELIZABETH  LODGE 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Published  October  ZQII 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I.  CHILDHOOD  ......      1 

CHAPTER  II.  CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  .      .    19 

CHAPTER  III.  "THE   SONG  OF  THE  WAVE"    47 

CHAPTER  IV.  WAR  AND  LOVE      ....    73 

CHAPTER  V.  MARRIAGE    ......    92 

CHAPTER  VI.  "CAIN"    ......  107 

CHAPTER  VII.  "THE    GREAT    ADVENTURE"  119 
CHAPTER  VIII.  "HERAKLES"      .....  155 

CHAPTER  IX.  THE  END                                      .  183 


226669 


THE  LIFE  OF 
GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

CHAPTER  I 

CHILDHOOD 

POETS  are  proverbially  born,  not  made;  and,  be 
cause  they  have  been  born  rarely,  the  conditions 
of  their  birth  are  singularly  interesting.  One  ima 
gines  that  the  conditions  surrounding  the  birth  of 
New  England  poets  can  have  varied  little,  yet,  in 
shades,  these  conditions  differ  deeply  enough  to 
perplex  an  artist  who  does  not  know  where  to  look 
for  them.  Especially  the  society  of  Boston  has  al 
ways  believed  itself  to  have  had,  from  the  start, 
a  certain  complexity,  —  certain  rather  refined 
nuances,  —  which  gave  it  an  avowed  right  to 
stand  apart;  a  right  which  its  members  never  hesi 
tated  to  assert,  if  it  pleased  them  to  do  so,  and 
which  no  one  thought  of  questioning.  One  of  the 


GEQRGE  CABOT  LODGE 


best-known  and  most  strongly  marked  of  these 
numerous  families,  was  —  and  still  is  —  that  of 
the  Cabots,  whose  early  story  has  been  told  by 
Henry  Cabot  Lodge  in  his  life  of  the  best-known 
member  of  the  family,  his  great-grandfather, 
George  Cabot,  Senator  of  the  United  States. 

George  Cabot's  son  Henry  married  Anna 
Blake,  and  had  a  daughter,  Anna  Sophia  Cabot, 
who  married  John  Ellerton  Lodge.  The  Lodges 
were  new  arrivals  in  Boston.  Giles  Lodge,  the 
grandfather,  having  narrowly  escaped  with  his  life 
from  the  San  Domingo  massacre,  arrived,  a  young 
Englishman  and  a  stranger,  in  Boston  in  1791. 
There  he  established  himself  in  business  and  mar 
ried  Mary  Langdon,  daughter  of  John  Langdon, 
an  officer  of  the  Continental  Army  and  cousin 
of  President  Langdon  of  Harvard  College,  who 
prayed  for  the  troops  on  the  eve  of  Bunker  Hill. 
Through  his  mother  John  Lodge  was  descended 
from  the  Walleys  and  Brattles  and  other  Puritan 
families  of  Boston,  now  for  the  most  part  extinct 
and  forgotten.  But  despite  the  paternal  grand 
mother,  Henry  Cabot  Lodge,  the  only  son  of  John 


CHILDHOOD  3 

Ellerton  Lodge  and  Anna  Cabot,  felt  himself  Bos- 
toman  chiefly  on  the  mother's  side,  as  an  off-shoot 
of  the  prolific  stock  of  the  Cabots,  who  were  really 
all  of  Essex  County  origin.  He  marked  the  point  by 
making  for  himself  a  world- wide  reputation  under 
the  double  name  of  Cabot  Lodge.  Of  him  the 
public  needs  no  biography,  since  he  became  a 
familiar  figure  to  millions  of  his  fellow-citizens 
from  somewhat  early  youth  to  a  fairly  advanced 
age;  and,  from  the  conspicuous  stage  of  the  Uni 
ted  States  Senate,  offered  a  far  more  conspicu 
ous  presence  than  his  great-grandfather,  George 
Cabot,  had  ever  done. 

To  Bostonians,  in  general,  the  Cabots  altogether 
are  a  stock  too  strong,  too  rich,  too  varied  in  their 
family  characteristics,  to  need  explanation.  Vol 
umes  might  be  written  on  them,  without  exhaust 
ing  the  varieties  of  the  strain. 

That  such  a  family  should  produce  a  poet  was 
not  matter  for  surprise;  but  as  though  to  make  such 
a  product  quite  natural  and  normal,  Henry  Cabot 
Lodge,  who  was  born  May  12,  1850,  married,  on 
June  29, 1871,  into  another  Massachusetts  family 


4  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

with  history  and  characteristics  as  marked  as  those 
of  the  Cabots  themselves. 

The  Plymouth  Colony  produced  Davises  as 
freely  as  the  north  shore  produced  Cabots.  [Daniel 
Davis,  of  the  Barnstaple  stock,  was  Solicitor-Gen 
eral  of  Massachusetts  in  the  days,  about  1800, 
when  the  Reverend  James  Freeman  was  the  Uni 
tarian  minister  of  King's  Chapel;  and  Daniel  Davis 
married  Lois  Freeman,  who  bore  him  thirteen  chil 
dren.  The  oldest,  Louisa,  married  William  Minot, 
of  a  family  more  thoroughly  Bostonian,  if  possible, 
than  all  the  rest.  The  youngest,  Charles  Henry 
Davis,  born  January  16,  1807,  in  Somerset  Street, 
Boston,  and,  in  due  course,  sent  to  Harvard  Col 
lege,  left  the  College,  in  1823,  to  enter  the  navy  as 
midshipman,  in  order  to  cruise  in  the  old  frigate, 
the  United  States,  in  the  Pacific,  under  the  com 
mand  of  his  friend  and  patron,  Commodore  Isaac 
Hull. 

The  life  of  Admiral  Davis  has  been  admirably 
told  elsewhere,  and  his  victories  at  Hilton  Head, 
in  November,  1861,  at  Fort  Pillow,  in  May,  1862, 
at  Memphis  and  Vicksburg,  afterwards,  rank 


CHILDHOOD  5 

among  the  most  decisive  of  the  Civil  War,  as  they 
rank  also  among  the  earliest  to  give  some  share  of 
hope  or  confidence  to  the  national  government  and 
to  the  loyal  voters;  but  his  brilliant  career  in  the 
navy  concerns  his  grandson-poet  less  than  the  do 
mestic  event  of  his  marriage,  in  1842,  to  Harriette 
Blake  Mills,  daughter  of  still  another  United 
States  Senator,  Elijah  Hunt  Mills,  of  Northamp 
ton,  Massachusetts,  who  was  also  a  conspicuous 
figure  in  his  day. 

The  complications  of  this  alliance  were  curious, 
and  among  them  was  the  chance  that  another 
daughter  of  Senator  Mills  married  Benjamin 
Peirce,  the  famous  Professor  of  Mathematics  at 
Harvard  College,  so  that  the  children  of  Admiral 
Davis  became  first  cousins  of  the  great  mathema 
tician  Charles  Peirce  and  his  brothers.  Among 
these  children  of  Admiral  Davis  was  a  daughter, 
Anna  Cabot  Mills  Davis,  who  grew  up  to  girlhood 
in  Cambridge,  under  the  shadow  of  Harvard  Col 
lege,  where  her  father,  the  Admiral,  lived  while  not 
in  active  service;  and  when,  after  his  appointment 
to  the  Naval  Observatory,  he  transferred  his  resi- 


6  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

dence  to  Washington,  she  made  her  home  there 
until  her  marriage,  in  June,  1871,  to  Henry  Cabot 
Lodge. 

Her  second  child,  George  Cabot  Lodge,  the 
subject  of  this  story,  was  born  in  Boston,  October 
10,  1873. 

A  poet,  born  in  Boston,  in  1873,  saw  about  him  a 
society  which  commonly  bred  refined  tastes,  and 
often  did  refined  work,  but  seldom  betrayed  strong 
emotions.  The  excitements  of  war  had  long 
passed;  its  ideals  were  forgotten,  and  no  other 
great  ideal  had  followed.  The  twenty -five  years 
between  1873  and  1898  —  years  of  astonishing 
scientific  and  mechanical  activity  —  were  marked 
by  a  steady  decline  of  literary  and  artistic  intens 
ity,  and  especially  of  the  feeling  for  poetry, 
which,  at  best,  had  never  been  the  favorite  form 
of  Boston  expression.  The  only  poet  who  could 
be  called  strictly  Bostonian  by  birth,  —  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson,  —  died  in  the  year  1882,  before 
young  Lodge  was  ten  years  old.  Longfellow,  who 
always  belonged  to  Cambridge  rather  than  to 
Boston,  died  in  the  same  year.  James  Russell 


CHILDHOOD  7 

Lowell  survived  till  1891,  but  was  also  in  no  strict 
social  sense  a  Bostonian.  Young  men  growing  up 
on  Beacon  Hill  or  the  Back  Bay  never  met  such 
characters  unless  by  a  rare  chance;  and  as  the  city 
became  busier  and  more  crowded,  the  chances 
became  rarer  still. 

Not  the  society,  therefore,  could  have  inspired  a 
taste  for  poetry.  Such  an  instinct  must  have  been 
innate,  like  his  cousin's  mathematics.  Society 
could  strike  him  only  as  the  absence  of  all  that  he 
might  have  supposed  it  to  be,  as  he  read  of  it  in  the 
history  and  poetry  of  the  past.  Even  since  the 
youth  of  R.  W.  Emerson,  the  sense  of  poetry  had 
weakened  like  the  sense  of  religion.  Boston  dif 
fered  little  from  other  American  towns  with  less 
reputation  for  intellect,  where,  as  a  rule,  not  many 
persons  entered  their  neighbors'  houses,  and  these 
were  members  of  the  family.  A  stranger  was  un 
known. 

The  classic  and  promiscuous  turmoil  of  the 
forum,  the  theatre,  or  the  bath,  which  trained  the 
Greeks  and  the  Romans,  or  the  narrower  contact 
of  the  church  and  the  coffee-house,  which  bred 


8  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

the  polished  standards  of  Dryden  and  Racine, 
were  unknown  in  America,  and  nearly  extinct  in 
Paris  and  London.  An  American  boy  scarcely 
conceived  of  getting  social  education  from  contact 
with  his  elders.  In  previous  generations  he  had 
been  taught  to  get  it  from  books,  but  the  young 
American  of  this  period  was  neither  a  bookish  nor 
a  social  animal.  Climate  and  custom  combined  to 
narrow  his  horizon. 

Commonly  the  boy  was  well  pleased  to  have  it 
so;  he  asked  only  to  play  with  his  fellows,  and  to 
escape  contact  with  the  world;  but  the  Boston 
child  of  the  Cabot  type  was  apt  to  feel  himself 
alone  even  as  a  child.  Unless  singularly  fortunate 
in  finding  and  retaining  sympathetic  companions, 
his  strong  individuality  rebelled  against  its  sur 
roundings.  Boys  are  naturally  sensitive  and  shy. 
Even  as  men,  a  certain  proportion  of  society 
showed,  from  the  time  of  the  Puritans,  a  marked 
reserve,  so  that  one  could  never  be  quite  sure  in 
State  Street,  more  than  in  Concord,  that  the  lawyer 
or  banker  whom  one  consulted  about  drawing  a 
deed  or  negotiating  a  loan,  might  not  be  uncon- 


CHILDHOOD  9 

sciously  immersed  in  introspection,  as  his  ances 
tors,  two  centuries  before,  had  been  absorbed  in 
their  chances  of  salvation.  The  latent  contrasts  of 
character  were  full  of  interest,  and  so  well  under 
stood  that  any  old  Bostonian,  familiar  with  family 
histories,  could  recall  by  scores  the  comedies  and 
tragedies  which  had  been  due  to  a  conscious  or 
unconscious  revolt  against  the  suppression  of  in 
stinct  and  imagination. 

Poetry  was  a  suppressed  instinct:  and  except 
where,  as  in  Longfellow,  it  kept  the  old  character 
of  ornament,  it  became  a  reaction  against  society, 
as  in  Emerson  and  the  Concord  school,  or,  further 
away  and  more  roughly,  in  Walt  Whitman.  Less 
and  less  it  appeared,  as  in  earlier  ages,  the  na 
tural,  favorite  expression  of  society  itself.  In  the 
last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  poet  be 
came  everywhere  a  rebel  against  his  surroundings. 
What  had  been  begun  by  Wordsworth,  Byron,  and 
Shelley,  was  carried  on  by  Algernon  Swinburne 
in  London  or  Paul  Verlaine  in  Paris  or  Walt 
Whitman  in  Washington,  by  a  common  instinct 
of  revolt.  Even  the  atmosphere  of  Beacon 


10  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Street  was  at  times  faintly  redolent  of  Schopen 
hauer. 

The  tendency  of  Bostonians  to  break  away  from 
conventional  society  was  fostered  by  the  harshness 
of  the  climate,  but  was  vastly  helped  by  the  neigh 
borhood  of  the  ocean.  Snow  and  ice  and  fierce 
northwest  gales  shut  up  society  within  doors  dur 
ing  three  months  of  winter;  while  equally  fierce 
heat  drove  society  to  camp  within  tide- water,  dur 
ing  three  months  of  summer.  There  the  ocean  was 
the  closest  of  friends.  Every  one  knows  the  little 
finger  of  granite  that  points  oceanward,  some  ten 
miles  north  of  Boston,  as  though  directing  the 
Bostonian  homeward.  The  spot  is  almost  an 
island,  connected  with  Lynn  by  a  long,  narrow 
strip  of  sand-beach;  but  on  the  island  a  small 
township  called  Nahant  has  long  existed,  and  the 
end  of  this  point  of  Nahant  was  bought  by  the 
grandfather,  John  Ellerton  Lodge,  as  a  country- 
place  for  summer  residence. 

The  whole  coast,  for  five  hundred  miles  in  either 
direction,  has  since  been  seized  for  summer  resi 
dence,  but  Nahant  alone  seems  to  be  actually  the 


CHILDHOOD  11 

ocean  itself,  as  though  it  were  a  ship  quitting 
port,  or,  better,  just  stranded  on  the  rocky  coast  of 
Cape  Ann.  There  the  winds  and  waves  are  alone 
really  at  home,  and  man  can  never  by  day  or  night 
escape  their  company.  At  the  best  of  times,  and 
in  their  most  seductive  temper,  their  restlessness 
carries  a  suggestion  of  change,  —  a  warning  of 
latent  passion,  —  a  threat  of  storm.  One  looks  out 
forever  to  an  infinite  horizon  of  shoreless  and 
shifting  ocean. 

The  sea  is  apt  to  revive  some  primitive  instinct 
in  boys,  as  though  in  a  far-off  past  they  had  been 
fishes,  and  had  never  quite  forgotten  their  home. 
The  least  robust  can  feel  the  repulsion,  even  when 
they  cannot  feel  the  physical  attraction,  of  the 
waves  playing  with  the  rocks  like  children  never 
quite  sure  of  their  temper;  but  the  Lodge  boy,  like 
most  other  boys  of  his  class  and  breed,  felt  the  sea 
as  an  echo  or  double  of  himself.  Commonly  this  / 
instinct  of  unity  with  nature  dies  early  in  Ameri 
can  life;  but  young  Lodge's  nature  was  itself  as  ele 
mentary  and  simple  as  the  salt  water.  Throughout 
life,  the  more  widely  his  character  spread  in  cir- 


12  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

cumference,  the  more  simply  he  thought,  and  even 
when  trying  to  grow  complex,  —  as  was  inevitable 
since  it  was  to  grow  in  Boston,  —  the  mind  itself 
was  never  complex,  and  the  complexities  merely 
gathered  on  it,  as  something  outside,  like  the  sea 
weeds  gathering  and  swaying  about  the  rocks. 
Robust  in  figure,  healthy  in  appetite,  careless  of 
consequences,  he  could  feel  complex  and  intro 
spective  only  as  his  ideal,  the  Norse  faun,  might 
feel  astonished  and  angry  at  finding  nature  per 
verse  and  unintelligible  in  a  tropical  jungle.  Since 
nature  could  not  be  immoral  or  futile,  the  immor 
ality  and  futility  must  be  in  the  mind  that  con 
ceived  it.  Man  became  an  outrage,  —  society  an 
artificial  device  for  the  distortion  of  truth,  —  civ 
ilization  a  wrong.  Many  millions  of  simple  natures 
have  thought,  and  still  think,  the  same  thing,  and 
the  more  complex  have  never  quite  made  up  their 
minds  whether  to  agree  with  them  or  not;  but  the 
thought  that  was  simple  and  sufficient  for  the 
Norseman  exploring  the  tropics,  or  for  an  exuber 
ant  young  savage  sailing  his  boat  off  the  rude 
shores  of  Gloucester  and  Cape  Ann,  could  not  long 


CHILDHOOD  13 

survive  in  the  atmosphere  of  State  Street.   Com 
monly  the  poet  dies  young. 

The  Nahant  life  was  intensely  home,  with  only  a 
father  and  mother  for  companions,  an  elder  sister, 
a  younger  brother,  cousins  or  boy  friends  at 
hazard,  and  boundless  sea  and  sky.  As  the  boy 
passed  his  tenth  year,  his  father  —  possibly  in 
spired  by  the  same  spirit  of  restlessness  —  turned 
much  of  his  time  and  attention  to  politics,  and  the 
mother  became  all  the  more  the  companion  and  re 
source  of  the  children.  From  the  earliest  forms  of 
mammal  life,  the  mothers  of  fauns  have  been  more 
in  love  with  their  offspring  than  with  all  else  in  ex 
istence;  and  when  the  mother  has  had  the  genius 
of  love  and  sympathy,  the  passion  of  altruism,  the 
instinct  of  taste  and  high-breeding,  besides  the 
commoner  resources  of  intelligence  and  education, 
the  faun  returns  the  love,  and  is  moulded  by  it 
into  shape. 

These  were  the  elements  of  his  youth,  and  the 
same  elements  will  be  found  recurring  in  all  that 
he  thought  and  said  during  his  thirty-six  years  of  */ 
life.  He  was  himself,  both  in  fact  and  in  imagina- 


14  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

tion,  "The  Wave,"  whose  song  he  began  his  liter 
ary  career  by  composing:  — 

This  is  the  song  of  the  wave,  that  died  in  the  fulness  of  life. 
The  prodigal  this,  that  lavished  its  largess  of  strength 
In  the  lust  of  achievement. 
Aiming  at  things  for  Heaven  too  high, 
Sure  in  the  pride  of  life,  in  the  richness  of  strength. 
So  tried  it  the  impossible  height,  till  the  end  was  found, 
Where  ends  the  soul  that  yearns  for  the  fillet  of  morning  stars, 
The  soul  in  the  toils  of  the  journeying  worlds, 
Whose  eye  is  filled  with  the  image  of  God, 
And  the  end  is  Death. 

Had  the  "Song  of  the  Wave"  been  written  after 
death  instead  of  before  the  beginning  of  life,  the 
figure  could  not  have  been  more  exact.  The  young 
man  felt  the  image  as  he  felt  the  act;  his  thought 
offered  itself  to  him  as  a  wave.  From  first  to  last  he 
identified  himself  with  the  energies  of  nature,  as 
the  story  will  show;  he  did  not  invent  images  for 
amusement,  but  described  himself  in  describing 
the  energy.  Even  the  figure  of  the  Norse  faun  was 
his  own  figure,  and  like  the  Wave,  with  which  it 
belongs,  was  an  effort  at  the  first  avowal  of  him- 


CHILDHOOD  15 

self  to  himself;  for  these  things  were  of  his  youth, 
felt  and  not  feigned:  — 

These  are  the  men! 

The  North  has  given  them  name, 

The  children  of  God  who  dare.  .  .  . 

These  are  the  men! 

In  their  youth  without  memory 

They  were  glad,  for  they  might  not  see 

The  lies  that  the  world  has  wrought 

On  the  parchment  of  God.  The  tree 

Yielded  them  ships,  and  the  sky 

'Flamed  as  the  waters  fought; 

But  they  knew  that  death  was  a  lie, 

That  the  life  of  man  was  as  nought, 

And  they  dwelt  in  the  truth  of  the  sea. 

These  are  the  men. 

In  conditions  of  life  less  intimate  than  those  of 
Boston,  such  a  way  of  conceiving  one's  own  exist 
ence  seems  natural;  indeed  almost  normal  for 
Wordsworths  and  Byrons,  Victor  Hugos  and  Wal 
ter  Savage  Landors,  Algernon  Swinburnes  and 
Robert  Louis  Stevensons;  —  but  to  the  Bostonian 
absorbed  in  the  extremely  practical  problem  of 
effecting  some  sort  of  working  arrangement  be- 


16  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

tween  Beacon  Street  and  the  universe,  the  attitude 
of  revolt  seemed  unnatural  and  artificial.  He  could 
not  even  understand  it.  For  centuries  the  Bos- 
tonian  had  done  little  but  wrestle  with  nature  for 
a  bare  existence,  and  his  foothold  was  not  so  secure, 
nor  had  it  been  so  easily  acquired,  nor  was  it  so 
victoriously  sufficient  for  his  wants,  as  to  make 
him  care  to  invite  the  ice  or  the  ocean  once  more  to 
cover  it  or  himself;  while,  even  more  keenly  than 
the  Scotchman  or  Norseman,  he  felt  that  he  ought 
not  to  be  reproached  for  the  lies  that  the  world, 
including  himself,  had  wrought,  under  compulsion, 
on  the  exceedingly  rough  and  scanty  parchment  of 
God. 

Therefore  the  gap  between  the  poet  and  the  citi 
zen  was  so  wide  as  to  be  impassable  in  Boston,  but 
it  was  not  a  division  of  society  into  hostile  camps, 
as  it  had  been  in  England  with  Shelley  and  Keats, 
or  in  Boston  itself,  half  a  century  before,  with  the 
anti-slavery  outbursts  of  Emerson  and  Whittier, 
Longfellow  and  Lowell,  which  shook  the  founda 
tions  of  the  State.  The  Bostonian  of  1900  differed 
from  his  parents  and  grandparents  of  1850,  in  own- 


CHILDHOOD  17 

ing  nothing  the  value  of  which,  in  the  market,  could 
be  affected  by  the  poet.  Indeed,  to  him,  the  poet's 
pose  of  hostility  to  actual  conditions  of  society  was 
itself  mercantile,  —  a  form  of  drama,  —  a  thing 
to  sell,  rather  than  a  serious  revolt.  Society  could 
safely  adopt  it  as  a  form  of  industry,  as  it  adopted 
other  forms  of  book-making. 

Therefore,  while,  for  young  Lodge  and  other 
protestants  of  his  age  and  type,  the  contrast  be 
tween  Nahant  and  Beacon  Street  was  a  real  one, 
—  even  a  vital  one,  —  life  in  both  places  was  nor 
mal,  healthy,  and  quite  free  from  bitterness  or 
social  strain.  Society  was  not  disposed  to  defend 
itself  from  criticism  or  attack.  Indeed,  the  most 
fatal  part  of  the  situation  for  the  poet  in  revolt,  the 
paralyzing  drug  that  made  him  helpless,  was  that 
society  no  longer  seemed  sincerely  to  believe  in 
itself  or  anything  else;  it  resented  nothing,  not 
even  praise.  The  young  poet  grew  up  without 
being  able  to  find  an  enemy.  With  a  splendid  phy 
sique,  a  warmly  affectionate  nature,  a  simple  but 
magnificent  appetite  for  all  that  life  could  give,  a 
robust  indifference  or  defiance  of  consequences,  a 


18  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

social  position  unconscious  of  dispute  or  doubt, 
and  a  large,  insatiable  ambition  to  achieve  ideals, 
—  with  these  ample  endowments  and  energies,  in 
full  consciousness  of  what  he  was  about  to  attempt, 
the  young  man  entered  deliberately  upon  what  he 
was  to  call  his  Great  Adventure. 


CHAPTER  II 

CAMBRIDGE   AND    PARIS 

To  all  young  Bostonians  of  a  certain  age  and 
social  position,  Harvard  College  opens  its  doors  so 
genially  as  to  impose  itself  almost  as  a  necessary 
path  into  the  simple  problems  of  Boston  life;  and 
it  has  the  rather  unusual  additional  merit  of  offer 
ing  as  much  help  as  the  student  is  willing  to  accept 
towards  dealing  with  the  more  complex  problems 
of  life  in  a  wider  sense.  Like  most  of  his  friends  and 
family,  young  Lodge,  at  eighteen  years  old,  went 
to  the  University,  and  profited  by  it  in  his  own 
way,  which  was  rarely,  with  Bostonians  of  his  type, 
precisely  the  way  which  the  actual  standards  of 
American  life  required  or  much  approved.  The 
first  two  years  seldom  profit  young  men  of  this 
class  at  all,  but  with  the  third  year,  their  tastes, 
if  they  have  any,  begin  to  show  themselves,  and 
their  minds  grope  for  objects  that  offer  them  at 
traction,  or  for  supports  that  the  young  tendrils 


20  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

can  grasp.  Every  instructor  has  seen  this  rather 
blind  process  going  on  in  generation  after  gen 
eration  of  students,  and  is  seldom  able  to  lend 
much  help  to  it;  but  if  he  is  so  fortunate  as  to 
teach  some  subject  that  attracts  the  student's 
fancy,  he  can  have  influence.  Owing  to  some  in 
nate  sympathies,  which  were  apparently  not  due 
to  inheritance  or  conditions,  Lodge  seemed  to  care 
less  for  English  than  for  French  or  Italian  or  clas 
sic  standards;  and  it  happened  that  the  French  de 
partment  was  then  directed  by  Professor  B6cher, 
who  took  a  fancy  to  the  young  man,  and  not  only 
helped  him  to  an  acquaintance  with  the  language, 
but  still  more  with  the  literature  and  the  thought 
of  France,  a  subject  in  which  Professor  B6cher  was 
an  admirable  judge  and  critic. 

At  first,  the  student  made  the  usual  conscien 
tious  effort  to  do  what  did  not  amuse  him.  "  I  am 
going  to  acquire  the  faculty  of  not  minding  apply 
ing  myself  to  uninteresting  subjects,  if  I  can,  and  I 
am  sure  that  it  is  possible,"  he  wrote  to  his  mother, 
March  21,  1893;  and  then,  pursuing  the  usual 
course  which  started  most  Harvard  students  on 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  21 

literary  careers,  he  fell  at  once  into  the  arms  of 
Thomas  Carlyle.  "I  am  making  a  study  of  the  re 
ligious  and  philosophical  side  of  Carlyle,  with  a 
view  to  writing  a  book  on  the  same ;  and  it  is  a 
most  absorbing  subject,"  he  wrote  on  May  6, 
1893.  "My  head  is  full  of  ideas  which  I  want  to 
let  out  in  that  book.  I  propose  to  devote  my 
summer  to  it.  Even  if  it  is  n't  a  success,  it  is 
better  than  doing  nothing,  and  it  is  profoundly  in 
teresting.  I  have  read  attentively  almost  every 
thing  he  ever  wrote  except  'Cromwell/  and  I  am 
taking  notes  on  all  the  more  philosophical  ones, 
like  '  Sartor  Resartus ' ;  and  I  am  also  reading  and 
studying  conjointly  the  French  philosophers,  Des 
cartes,  Malebranche  and  Spinoza,  and  the  German 
Schopenhauer  and  Fichte,  and  also  Plato,  so  that 
I  shall  get  an  idea  of  his  relations  to  the  celebrated 
philosophies.  I  am  going  to  read  Froude's  life  of 
him."  The  door  by  which  a  student  enters  the  vast 
field  of  philosophy  matters  little,  for,  whatever  it 
is,  the  student  cannot  stay  long  in  it;  but  for  one 
of  such  wide  views,  Carlyle  could  serve  a  very 
short  time  as  the  central  interest. 


22  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

"To-day  Bourget  came  out  here  to  a  lecture  in 
French  7  by  Sumichrast,  and  Sumichrast  got  him 
to  talk,  which  he  did  most  charmingly.  I  have 
been  taking  a  course  of  Bourget,  among  other 
things,  *Mensonges';  and  I  feel  as  if  I  had  been 
living  in  the  mire.  Never  have  I  read  books  whose 
atmosphere  was  so  unhealthy  and  fetid."  This  was 
written  to  his  mother,  December  12,  1893,  when 
he  was  barely  twenty  years  old,  and  marks  the 
steady  tide  of  French  influence  that  was  carrying 
him  on  to  its  usual  stage  of  restlessness  and  de 
pression.  On  February  28,  1894,  he  wrote  again, 
announcing  that  he  had  fairly  reached  the  moral 
chaos  which  belonged  to  his  temperament  and 
years:  "I  am  in  very  good  health  and  very  bad 
spirits,  and  I  am  feeling  pretty  cynical.  It  is  a  con 
stant  struggle  for  me  to  prevent  myself  from  be 
coming  cynical,  and  when  I  feel  blue  and  depressed, 
the  dykes  break  and  it  all  comes  to  the  surface.  I 
suppose  I  have  seen  more  of  the  evil  and  mean  side 
of  men  and  things  than  most  men  of  my  age,  which 
accounts  for  my  having  naturally  a  pessimistic 
turn.  Really,  though,  I  hate  cynicism;  —  it  is  a 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  23 

compilation  of  cheap  aphorisms  that  any  fool  can 
learn  to  repeat;  —  and  yet  the  world  does  seem  a 
bad  place." 

A  common  place  rather  than  a  bad  place  was  the 
next  natural  and  cheap  aphorism  which  every  im 
aginative  young  man  could  look  with  confidence  to 
reach,  but  the  process  of  reaching  it  varies  greatly 
with  the  temperament  of  the  men.  In  Lodge  it 
soon  took  the  form  of  philosophic  depression  ac 
companied  by  intense  ambition.  The  combination, 
at  the  age  of  twenty,  is  familiar  in  Europeans,  but 
not  so  common  among  Americans,  who  are  apt 
to  feel,  or  to  show,  diffidence  in  their  own  powers. 
Lodge's  letters  will  reveal  himself  fully  on  that 
side,  but  what  they  show  still  better  is  the  im 
mense  appetite  of  the  young  man  for  his  intellect 
ual  food,  once  he  had  found  the  food  he  liked. 

"Since  I  got  back  [to  Cambridge],"  he  wrote 
to  his  mother  on  March  14,  1894,  "I  have  been 
reading  an  immense  quantity  from  variegated 
authors,  Balzac  especially;  also  Flaubert,  Alfred 
de  Vigny,  Leconte  de  Lisle,  and  Musset,  Hugo, 
Renan  (whom  I  am  going  to  write  a  long  French 


24  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

theme  about),  Schopenhauer,  and  then  the  Upan- 
ishads,  etc.  Next  time  French  literature  is  dis 
cussed,  ask  them  what  living  poet  equals  Sully 
Prudhomme."  He  was  already  in  a  region  where 
Boston  society  —  or  indeed,  any  other  society  ex 
cept  perhaps  that  of  Paris  —  would  have  been 
puzzled  to  answer  his  questions;  but  the  sense  of 
reaching  new  regions  excited  him.  "I  am  begin 
ning  to  get  beautifully  into  harness  now,"  he 
wrote  on  November  16, 1894,  "and  find  that,  out 
side  my  College  work,  I  can  read  from  one  hundred 
and  fifty  to  two  hundred  pages  a  day.  ...  If  I 
were  living  in  Gobi  or  Sahara,  with  the  British 
Museum  next  door  and  the  Louvre  round  the 
corner,  I  think  I  could  do  almost  anything.  When 
I  work  I  have  to  fill  myself  full  of  my  subject,  and 
then  write  everything  down  without  referring  to 
any  books.  If  I  am  interrupted  in  the  agonies  of 
composition,  it  takes  me  some  time  to  get  into  the 
vein."  The  passion  for  reading  passed  naturally 
into  the  passion  for  writing,  and  every  new  vol 
ume  read  reflected  itself  in  a  volume  to  be  written. 
The  last  term  of  college  began  and  ended  in  this 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  25 

frame  of  mind.  He  wrote  on  January  17, 1895:  "I 
have  a  scheme  of  writing  essays  on  Schopenhauer, 
Swift,  Moliere,  Foe,  Leconte  de  Lisle,  Carlyle,  Al 
fred  de  Vigny,  Balzac,  Thackeray  (perhaps)  and 
any  others  I  may  think  of,  and  entitling  the  collec 
tion  *  Studies  in  Pessimism,'  or  some  such  title, 
and  treat  them  all,  of  course,  from  that  point  of 
view.  I  could  write  them  all  except  Swift  and 
Thackeray  and  Balzac  with  very  little  prepara 
tion;  and  even  with  those  three  I  should  not  need 
much.  I  wish  you  would  ask  papa  what  he  thinks 
of  my  idea.  Last  night  Max  Scull  and  I  took 
Brun  (the  French  teacher)  to  dinner  and  the  thea 
tre  afterwards.  He  was  quite  entertaining,  and  I 
improved  my  French  considerably,  as  we  spoke 
nothing  else.  I  told  him  I  was  going  to  France  next 
summer,  and  he  told  me  to  write  to  him  and  *qu'  il 
me  montrerait  Paris  a  fond.'  I  have  been  working 
on  my  wretched  story,  and  have  gone  over  it  about 
8  times.  It  now  seems  to  me  to  be  quite  valueless. 
Also  I  have  burst  into  song  several  times  —  rather 
lamely,  I  fear." 

Then  began,  still  in  college,   the    invariable, 


26  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

never-ending  effort  of  the  artist  to  master  his  art, 
—  to  attain  the  sureness  of  hand  and  the  quality 
of  expression  which  should  be  himself.  Lodge 
plunged  into  the  difficulties  with  the  same  appe 
tite  which  he  felt  for  the  facilities  of  expression, 
and  felt  at  once  where  his  personal  difficulties 
were  likely  to  be  greatest,  in  his  own  exuberance. 
"I  find  I  cannot  polish  my  verses  to  any  great  ex 
tent,"  he  continued  on  March  20,  1895;  "I  write 
when  I  feel  in  the  mood,  and  then  they  are  done  — 
badly  or  well,  as  the  case  may  be.  If  badly,  they 
must  either  be  all  written  over,  or  else  burnt,  and  a 
new  one  written,  generally  the  most  appropriate 
fate  for  most  of  them.  However,  I  am  indeed  very 
glad  that  you  and  papa  think  I  am  improving, 
however  slightly.  I  enclose  three  efforts  in  a  more 
lyrical  strain.  I  find  it  rather  a  relief  to  be  less 
trammeled,  and  unfettered  to  so  concrete  and  ab 
solute  a  form  as  the  Petrarchan  sonnet,  —  which 
is  the  only  kind  I  write  now.  I  have  been  looking 
over  the  few  sonnets  Shelley  wrote.  He  had  no 
form  at  all  in  them.  He  seems  to  have  built  them 
up  with  no  preconceived  idea  of  form  whatever. 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  27 

Take  'Ozymandias'  for  instance,  which  I  admire 
intensely,  and  one  finds  no  structure  at  all.  Yet  of 
course  we  know  that  the  whole,  as  read,  is  superb. 
I  wonder  if  most  people  notice  the  form  of  a  sonnet. 
I  know  I  did  n't,  before  I  began  to  scribble  my 
self.  Still,  I  do  think,  other  things  being  equal,  that 
the  Petrarchan  form  adds  a  dignity  and  beauty 
to  a  sonnet  which  no  other  form  possesses.  The 
contour  is  much  more  harmonious  and  symmet 
rical." 

Thus  the  young  man  had  plunged  headlong  into 
the  higher  problems  of  literary  art,  before  he  was 
fairly  acquainted  with  the  commoner  standards. 
Whether  he  ever  framed  to  himself  a  reason  for  pur 
suing  one  form  rather  than  another,  might  be  a 
curious  question.  Why  should  not  Shakespeare  and 
the  Elizabethans  have  appealed  to  him  first?  Was 
it  because  the  Petrarchan  form  was  more  perfect, 
or  because  it  was  less  English?  Whatever  the  an 
swer  to  this  question  may  be,  the  fact  is  that, 
throughout  life,  he  turned  away  from  the  English 
models,  and  seemed  often  indifferent  to  their  exist 
ence.  The  trait  was  not  wholly  peculiar  to  him, 


28         GEORGE  CABOT  LODGED 

for  even  in  England  itself  the  later  Victorian  poets, 
with  Algernon  Swinburne  at  their  head,  showed  a 
marked  disposition  to  break  rather  abruptly  with 
the  early  Victorian  poets,  and  to  wander  away  after 
classical  or  mediaeval  standards;  but  their  example 
was  hardly  the  influence  that  affected  Lodge. 
With  him,  the  English  tradition  possibly  repre 
sented  a  restraint, — a  convention, — a  chain  that 
needed  to  be  broken,  —  that  jarred  on  his  intense 
ambition. 

"Oh,  I  am  devoured  by  ambition,"  he  wrote  in 
the  last  days  of  his  college  life,  to  his  mother:  "I 
do  so  want  to  do  something  that  will  last, — some 
man's  work  in  the  world,  —  that  I  am  constantly 
depressed  by  an  awful  dread  that  perhaps  I  shan't 
be  able  to.  I  am  never  satisfied  with  what  I  do, 
—  never  contented  with  my  expression  of  what  I 
wish  to  express,  and  yet  I  hope  and  sometimes  feel 
that  it  is  possible  I  may  do  something  permanent 
in  value.  I  have  got  at  last  a  scheme  for  the  future 
which  I  think  it  probable  you  will  like,  and  papa 
also;  but  I  shall  be  better  able  to  tell  you  when  I 
see  you.  I  have  read  nothing  lately  outside  my 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  29 

work  except  the  'Theologia  Germanica'  which 
Mrs.  Wintie  [Chanler]  sent  me,  and  which  has 
many  beautiful  things  in  it.  I  have  written  even 
less, — just  a  few  scraps  of  verse  (one  of  which,  a 
sonnet,  is  coming  out  in  the  next  *  Monthly '  by 
the  way),  and  that  article  on  Shakespeare  which 
went  to  papa.  I  am  anxious  to  know  what  he 
thinks  of  it." 

With  this,  the  college  life  closed,  having  given, 
liberally  and  sympathetically,  all  it  could  give, 
leaving  its  graduates  free,  and  fairly  fitted,  to  turn 
where  they  chose  for  their  further  food;  which 
meant,  for  young  Lodge,  as  his  letters  have  told, 
the  immediate  turning  to  Paris.  The  choice  showed 
the  definite  determination  of  his  thought.  England, 
Germany,  Italy,  did  not,  at  that  stage,  offer  the 
kind  of  education  he  wanted.  He  meant  to  make 
himself  a  literary  artist,  and  in  Paris  alone  he  could 
expect  to  find  the  technical  practice  of  the  liter 
ary  arts.  In  Paris  alone,  a  few  men  survived  who 
talked  their  language,  wrote  prose,  and  constructed 
drama,  as  they  modelled  a  statue  or  planned  a 
structure. 


SO  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

i 

Thus  far,  as  commonly  happens  even  to  ambi 
tious  young  men,  the  path  was  easy,  and  the  out 
look  clear;  but  the  illusion  of  ease  and  horizon  sel 
dom  lasts  long  in  Paris.  A  few  days  completely 
dispel  it.  Almost  instantly  the  future  becomes 
desperately  difficult.  Especially  to  an  American, 
the  processes  and  machinery  of  a  French  education 
are  hard  to  apply  in  his  home  work.  The  French 
mind  thinks  differently  and  expresses  its  thought 
differently,  so  that  the  American,  though  he  may 
actually  think  in  French,  will  express  his  thought 
according  to  an  American  formula.  Merely  the 
language  profits  him  little;  the  arts  not  much  more; 
the  history  not  at  all;  the  poetry  is  ill  suited  to  the 
genius  of  the  English  tongue;  the  drama  alone  is 
capable  of  direct  application;  in  sum,  it  is  the 
whole  —  the  combination  of  tradition,  mental 
habit,  association  of  ideas,  labor  of  technique,  crit 
icism,  instinct  —  that  makes  a  school,  and  the 
school,  once  mastered,  is  of  only  indirect  use  to  an 
American.  The  secret  of  French  literary  art  is  a 
secret  of  its  own  which  does  not  exist  in  America. 
Indeed,  the  American  soon  begins  to  doubt  whether 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  81 

America  has  any  secrets,  either  in  literary  or  any 
other  art. 

Within  a  few  weeks  all  these  doubts  and  difficul 
ties  had  risen  in  young  Lodge's  face,  and  he  found 
himself  reduced  to  the  usual  helplessness  of  the 
art-student  in  Paris,  working  without  definite  pur 
pose  in  several  unrelated  directions.  At  best,  the 
atmosphere  of  Paris  in  December  lacks  gayety 
except  for  Parisians,  or  such  as  have  made  them 
selves  by  time  and  temperament,  more  or  less 
Parisian.  One  flounders  through  it  as  one  best  can; 
but  in  Lodge's  case,  the  strain  was  violently  ag 
gravated  by  the  political  storm  suddenly  roused 
by  President  Cleveland's  Venezuela  message,  and 
sympathy  with  his  father's  political  responsibilities 
in  the  Senate. 

PARIS,  December  26,  1895. 

The  study  here  is  wholly  different  from  any 
thing  I  have  been  accustomed  to  and  I  am  in  some 
ways  much  alone.  It  seems  to  me  here  as  if  I  was 
losing  my  grip,  my  aggressiveness,  my  force  of  mind, 
and  it  is  a  feeling  that  has  been  gradually  coming 
over  me,  and  that  Venezuela  has  brought  to  a 


32  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

crisis.  I  don't  do  anything  here,  nothing  tangible. 
I  work  five  hours  a  day  or  six,  and  what  on  —  a 
miserable  little  poetaster.  I  want  to  get  home  and 
get  some  place  on  a  newspaper  or  anything  of  that 
kind,  and  really  do  something.  I  spend  more 
money  than  is  necessary,  and  altogether  don't 
seem  to  lead  a  very  profitable  life.  For  me,  loafing 
is  not  fun  except  in  a  recognized  vacation.  I  never 
realized  this  until  now.  I  thought  I  should  like  to 
take  it  easy  for  a  while  and  soi-disant  amuse  my 
self.  I  am  wretched.  I  want  something  real  to  do. 
I  don't  want  to  become  a  mere  Teutonic  grind,  and 
it's  necessary  to  do  that  if  you  are  going  to  take 
degrees  here.  Both  you  and  papa  told  me  to  feel  no 
hesitation  in  coming  home  if  I  wanted  to,  and  so 
now  that  I  have  been  here  long  enough  to  see  I 
have  made  an  error,  I  write  as  I  do.  I  am  always 
slow  of  comprehension,  and  if  it  has  taken  me  a 
long  time  to  find  this  out,  it's  just  that  I  am  getting 
experience  —  rather  slowly  and  stupidly.  I  have 
not  yet  absolutely  decided;  If  this  appears  to  you 
hasty  or  ill-advised,  please  let  me  know  in  the 
shortest  way  possible. 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  33 

Venezuela  excites  me  horribly  and  my  poor  mind 
is  rather  torn,  as  you  may  see  by  this  somewhat 

incoherent  letter. 

PARIS,  January  6,  1896. 

Since  I  last  wrote  you  I  have  quieted  down  a 
good  deal  more.  I  feel  as  if  I  had  been  through 
three  hideous  weeks  of  madness  and  were  become 
on  a  sudden  sane.  You  see  the  Venezuela  affair 
came  on  me  on  a  sudden  and  filled  me  with  such  a 
longing  for  home  that  I  lost  all  pleasure  in  things 
over  here.  So  my  poor  mind  whirled  round  and 
round  from  one  thing  to  another  till  I  almost  went 
mad.  Now  Venezuela  seems  to  be  a  danger  only  in 
the  future  if  at  all,  and  I  am  realizing  how  much  I 
am  getting  here. 

If  papa  is  willing  I  should  stay  I  can  come  back 
with  a  good  knowledge  of  German,  Italian  and 
Spanish,  and  of  Romance  Philology  and  Middle 
Age  Literature  —  all  of  which  things  I  very  much 
need. 

The  thing  which  tore  me  worst  in  all  this  mental 
struggle  I  have  been  going  through  was  the  con 
tinual  thought  of  money  and  my  crying  inability 


34  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

to  adapt  myself  to  my  time  and  to  become  a  money 
maker.  I  felt  as  if  it  was  almost  cowardly  of  me  not 
to  turn  in  and  leave  all  the  things  I  love  and  the 
world  does  n't,  behind,  and  to  adjust  myself  to  my 
age,  and  try  to  take  its  ideals  and  live  strongly  and 
wholly  in  its  spirit.  It  seems  so  useless  being  an 
eternal  malcontent.  Unless  one  is  a  Carlyle,  to 
scream  on  paper  generally  ends  in  a  thin  squeak, 
and  I  fought  and  fought  to  try  to  be  more  a  man  of 
my  age  so  that  I  might  work  with  the  tide  and  not 
against  it.  But  it 's  no  use,  I  cannot  stifle  my  own 
self  or  alter  it  in  that  way.  I  said  to  myself  that  I 
ought  to  go  home  in  order  to  get  into  the  tide  of 
American  life  if  for  nothing  else; that  I  oughtn't  to 
be  dreaming  and  shrieking  inside  and  poetizing  and 
laboring  on  literature  here  in  Paris,  supported  by 
my  father,  and  that  I  ought  to  go  home  and  live 
very  hard  making  money.  I  said  to  myself  that  I 
knew  I  could  not  be  very  quick  at  money-making, 
but  that  at  any  rate  in  the  eyes  of  men  I  should 
lead  a  self-respecting  life  and  my  hideous,  utter 
failure  would  only  be  for  myself  and  you,  who 
understand;  But  somehow  all  the  while  my  soul 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  35 

refused  to  believe  the  plain  facts  and  illogically 
clung  to  the  belief  that  I  might  do  some  good  in 
creative  work  in  the  world  after  all,  and  so  I 
struggled  with  the  facts  and  my  faiths  and  loves 
and  there  was  the  Devil  of  a  row  inside  me  and  I 
most  wretched.  Now  it  seems  to  me  that  my  stay 
ing  here  can  do  no  harm,  as  I  can  just  as  well  begin 
to  be  19th  century  next  year  as  this,  and  I  shall 
have  a  very  happy  winter  and  acquire  some  know 
ledge  and  much  experience.  And  so  now  my  mind 
is  comparatively  calm  and  I  am  becoming  happy 
again  and  seeing  things  a  little  more  in  their  proper 
perspective. 

Now  like  Marcus  Aurelius  I  have  come  home  to 
my  own  soul  and  found  there,  I  am  glad  to  say, 
sufficient  strength  and  resource  and  calm  to  rees 
tablish  my  equilibrium,  and  make  me  see  how 
cowardly  it  is  not  to  have  enough  self-reliance  to 
bear  such  things  as  these  with  a  tolerably  good 
grace.  .  .  . 

I  might  entitle  this  letter:  "Of  the  entering, 
passing  through,  and  coming  out  of,  the  madness 
of  George  Cabot  Lodge."  I  really  feel  as  if  the 


36  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

past  two  weeks  were  a  great  black  hole  in  my  life, 
in  which  all  my  landmarks  were  blurred,  and  I 
have  just  found  them  again. 

PARIS,  January  16,  1896. 

I  am  now  working  principally  on  Romance  Phi 
lology,  Spanish  and  Italian.  I  usually  go  to  the 
Bibliotheque  in  the  morning  and  work  on  Spanish. 
I  am  studying  the  history  of  the  literature  and 
trying  to  read  the  most  important  things  as  I  go 
along.  It  is  hard  work  reading  the  old  Spanish  of 
the  12th  to  15th  centuries,  but  I  am  convinced  it  is 
the  only  way  to  know  the  language  or  literature 
really  thoroughly.  I  also  work  on  my  Spanish 
courses.  In  Italian  I  am  reading  Tiraboschi, 
"Storia  della  litteratura  Italiana,"  which  of  course 
is  the  great  history  of  the  Italian  literature.  I  also 
work  a  good  deal  on  Petrarch:  he  is  one  of  my 
courses,  you  know.  Mr.  Stickney  sent  to  Italy  for 
me  for  a  good  edition  of  Dante,  and  when  it  comes 
I  shall  begin  the  study  of  it.  In  the  afternoon  I  go 
to  courses,  and  sometimes  of  course  in  the  morn 
ing  too,  and  play  billiards  as  a  rule  about  five  with 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  37 

Joe,  and  in  the  evening  work  on  my  Romance 
Philology.  I  have  procured  by  good  fortune  a  very 
good  dictionary  of  the  old  French. 

Thus,  you  see,  my  work  now  is  concentrated  on 
the  Romance  Languages  and  Literature,  especially 
before  the  16th  century.  I  shall  keep  on  princi 
pally  on  them,  because  I  am  sure  by  so  doing  I  can 
come  home  with  a  more  or  less  thorough  know 
ledge  of  the  Latin  tongues  and  a  little  more  than  a 
smattering  of  their  literature.  The  Latin  languages 
attract  me  and  I  shall  work  hard  on  them.  As  for 
German,  I  shall  learn  it  if  I  can  find  time,  but  I 
don't  know.  ...  I  see  now  that  I  must  do  the 
best  in  me  if  I  can;  and  if  there  is  a  best  to  do;  and 
at  any  rate  I  have  n't  the  force  or  the  weakness  to 
renounce  everything  without  having  one  glorious 
fight  for  what  I  want  to  do  and  believe  is  best  to  do. 
It  is  this  realization  of  my  own  self  that  has  done 
me  most  good,  I  think. 

I  went  to  the  Franc.ais  last  night.  It  was  the 
birthday  of  Moliere  and  they  gave  the  "ficole  des 
Femmes"  and  the  "Malade  Imaginaire,"  and 
afterwards  the  ceremony  of  crowning  the  bust  by 


38  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

all  the  Societaires  and  pensionnairesof  the  Theatre. 
It  was  most  interesting.  I  think  the  best  night  of 
theatre  I  ever  had. 

PARIS,  January  27,  1896. 

My  languages  get  on  very  well.  Italian  and 
Spanish  I  am  really  getting  very  smart  in  and  read 
with  perfect  ease,  and  I  am  sure  when  I  come  back 
I  shall  know  a  good  deal  about  the  Romance  Lan 
guages.  My  German  I  am  working  on,  and  of 
course  it  comes  more  slowly,  but  I  think  I  can  do  it 
all  right. 

PARIS,  February  21,  1896.  ' 

I  have  just  lived  through  the  Carnival  here, 
which  began  on  Saturday  night  with  the  bal  de 
Vopera  (third  of  the  name)  and  continued  until 
Wednesday  morning.  I  took  it  in  with  consider 
able  thoroughness.  There  was  the  procession  of 
the  Bceuf  Gras  —  the  first  time  this  has  occurred 
since  the  Franco-German  war.  It  was  very  pretty 
and  the  crowds  in  the  street  tremendous  —  all 
throwing  paper  confetti  and  long  rolls  of  paper, 
which  one  might  throw  across  the  boulevards. 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  39 

\ 

Now  the  trees  are  all  covered  with  long  ribbons  of 
papers  of  all  colors.  It  was  a  very  pretty  sight  and 
most  amusing.  I  never  imagined  such  a  good-tem 
pered  crowd,  and  one  so  bound  to  have  a  good 
time.  I  send  by  this  mail  a  sort  of  programme  with 
an  amusing  picture  by  Caran  D'Ache.  I  was  glad 
of  the  Carnival.  I  think  one  gets  into  terrible  ruts 
and  little  habits  close  around  one,  and  one  gets 
dull  and  mechanical.  The  Carnival  just  broke  all 
that  up  for  me,  and  for  three  days  I  led  a  wholly 
irregular  life,  that  had  a  certain  splendor  in  the  un 
expectedness  of  everything  I  did.  .  .  . 

C.  and  P.  both  wrote  me  very  nice  things  about 
my  poems.  I  have  just  read  over  a  lot  and  become 
drearily  conscious  that  they  are  far  from  deserving 
any  praise,  so  that  it  rather  worries  me  to  have 
people  so  kind  about  them,  as  it  seems  as  if  I  could 
never  live  up  to  what  they  think  I  ought  to  do. 
However,  I  have  become  an  excellent  critic  of  my 
own  work  and  diligently  weed  out  from  time  to 
time  all  that  seems  flat,  so  that  I  may  some  day 
have  something  really  poetry. 


40  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

PARIS,  April  5,  1896. 

Here  it 's  Easter  Sunday  and  I  have  n't  had  a 
happier  day  for  a  long  time.  The  skies  have  been 
bright  blue  and  the  sun  pure  gold,  and  the  trees  all 
timidly  "uttering  leaves"  everywhere,  and  so  I 
want  to  write  to  you.  Early  this  morning  Joe  and  I 
went  and  rode  horses  in  the  Bois,  which  we  had  al 
ready  done  last  Sunday,  and  are  going  to  do  more 
often.  It  was  most  marvellous  —  all  the  little  fresh 
greening  things  looking  out  of  the  earth,  and  the 
early  sunlight  coming  wet  and  mild  through  the 
trees,  and  the  rare  fresh  air,  and  the  sense  of 
physical  glow  and  exercise. 

I  found  an  alley  with  about  a  dozen  jumps  in 
it  and  whisked  my  old  hired  horse  over  the  entire 
lot,  with  the  surprising  result  that  he  jumped 
rather  well,  except  the  water-jump,  into  which 
he  flatly  jumped,  managing,  however,  to  stand 
up.  Then  I  came  home  and  read  Petrarch  and 
Ronsard,  and  in  the  afternoon  took  a  boat  down 
a  bright  blue  Seine  with  white  bridges  spanning 
it  and  a  Louvre,  etc.,  on  either  hand.  I  got  off 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  41 

at  the  He  St.  Louis,  and  "for  the  pure  dramatic 
effect,  went  into  the  "Doric  little  morgue"  and 
saw  two  terrible  dead  old  women  with  the  lower 
jaw  dropped  on  the  withered  breast  and  the  green 
of  decomposition  beginning  about  the  open  eyes. 
Then  I  came  out  into  the  broad  sunshine,  with 
that  blessed  Cathedral  Apse  in  front  of  me,  and  its 
little  sun-filled  garden  with  the  old  Gothic  fountain 
running  pure  water,  and  felt  it  was  very  good  to 
live.  Then  I  went  in  and  heard  a  splendid  mass, 
with  the  great  organ  rolling  up  by  the  front  rose- 
window,  and  saw  the  Host  raised  and  the  church 
full  (really  full)  of  people  fall  on  their  knees,  and 
the  thick  incense  come  slowly  out,  and  felt  alas! 
how  far  away  I  was  from  the  substance  of  the 
shadow  of  splendor  I  was  feeling.  But  I  was  very 
happy  for  all  that,  and  wandered  around  some 
more  in  the  sunlight,  and  then  came  home,  where  I 
am  now  writing  to  you. 

This  winter  I  have  been  realizing  a  copy-book 
commonplace,  which  is  at  the  same  time  a  meta 
physical  profundity,  viz.:  that  the  present  is  all 


42  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

that  is  and  it  is*  not.  One  of  the  crowning  meta 
physical  paradoxes.  Of  course  the  present  is  not. 
While  you  are  uttering  "now,"  it  is  fled  —  it  never 
existed.  It  is  like  a  geometrical  point,  non-ex 
istent.  And  the  past  —  that's  the  cruel  thing,  the 
killing  memories.  Memories  of  yesterday,  of  the 
moment  just  fled,  which  are  as  hopelessly  dead,  as 
impossibly  distant  as  memories  of  ten  years  gone. 
The  past  is  like  a  great  pit,  and  the  present  like  a 
frittered  edge  which  is  continually  crumbling  and 
falling  utterly  down  into  the  pit.  .  .  .  For  me  — 
my  past  is  all  amoncele,  nothing  nearer,  nothing  far 
ther.  I  have  a  more  vivid  memory  of  Sister  with 
long  hair,  driving  old  Rab  up  the  side- walk  by  the 
Gibsons'  at  Nahant  on  a  gray  autumn  day,  than 
of  most  things  happened  within  the  year.  And  my 
memories  are  all  sad  —  sad  with  an  infinite  hope 
less  regret;  that  one  of  Sister  for  example  has  al 
most  made  me  cry.  And  then  the  present  is  the 
past  so  facilely,  so  quickly,  and  I  find  myself  some 
times  when  I  am  not  doing  anything  —  talking 
perhaps  or  sitting  idle  or  even  reading,  in  fact 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  43 

un  pen  toujours,  —  suddenly  turning  sick  and  cold 
and  saying  to  myself,  "See,  your  life  goes,  goes, 
goes.  Every  day  you  get  more  memories  to  dwell 
about  you  like  mourning  creatures,  and  still  no 
thing  done  —  with  your  youth,  your  strength,  and 
every  minute  the  memories  thickening  and  the 
pain  of  them  increasing,  and  still  nothing  done. 
Man!  Man!  Your  life  is  very  short,  already 
twenty  and  two  years;  as  many  again,  and  you 
will  be  hardened  into  your  mould,  and  the  mould 
yet  unmade!  Up,  up  and  do  something!" 

And  the  future  —  it  is  the  veriest  of  common 
places  to  say  the  future  does  n't  exist.  It  is  nothing 
but  a  probability  —  at  best  a  hope.  And  then  did 
it  ever  occur  to  you  that  the  present  is  like  a  piece 
of  paper  on  which  experience  writes  in  invisible  ink, 
and  that  only  when  the  heat  of  the  pain  of  memory 
and  regret  blfews  upon  it,  do  the  characters  come 
out  and  you  know  how  intensely  alive,  how  happy, 
or  at  any  rate  how  miserable,  or  at  least  how  un- 
bored,  you  had  been. 

It  seems  to  me  all  the  happiness  (except,  of 


44  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

course,  physical)  which  we  get  is  only  the  more  or 
less  incomplete  suggestion  or  partial  realization 
of  some  remembered  happiness.  For  instance,  the 
slant  of  the  western  sun  through  green  leaves  some 
times  brings  back  one  perfectly  unimportant  after 
noon  when  I  was  very  small,  and  Sister  sat  on  the 
grass  under  those  willows,  behind  the  little  tool- 
house  in  front  of  Mr.  Locke's,  and  read  a  story 
aloud  to  me. 

She  left  off  in  the  middle,  and  I  can  distinctly 
remember  the  last  words  she  said.  Now  when  I 
can  get  a  vivid  suggestion  of  something  intensely 
happy  in  my  memory,  infinitely  richer  and  more 
happy  than  I  had  any  idea  of  when  it  occurred, 
it  makes  me  more  happy  than  anything.  Happi 
ness  is  a  continual  thinking  backward  or  forward, 
memory  or  expectation. 

This  may  all  sound  rather  rhetorical,  but  I 
assure  you  it  is  unintentional.  If  you  knew  how 
intensely  I  have  been  feeling  all  this  and  much 
more  that  I  cannot  express,  you  would  know  that 
this  is  n't  rhetoric,  but  pure  crying  out  of  the  soul 
—  such  as  I  could  only  say  to  you. 


CAMBRIDGE  AND  PARIS  45 

Thousands  of  young  people,  of  both  sexes,  pass 
through  the  same  experience  in  their  efforts  to 
obtain  education,  in  Paris  or  elsewhere,  and  are 
surprised  to  find  at  the  end,  that  their  education 
consists  chiefly  in  whatever  many-colored  im 
pressions  they  have  accidentally  or  unconsciously 
absorbed.  In  these  their  stock  or  capital  of  experi 
ence  is  apt  to  consist,  over  and  above  such  general 
training  as  is  the  common  stock  of  modern  soci 
ety;  but  most  of  them  would  find  themselves  puz 
zled  to  say  in  what  particular  class  of  impression 
their  gain  was  greatest.  Lodge  would  have  said 
at  once  that  his  gain  was  greatest  in  the  friend 
ship  with  young  Stickney,  to  which  the  letters 
allude. 

Joseph  Trumbull  Stickney,  who  was  then  pre 
paring  his  thesis  for  the  unusual  distinction  of 
doctorate  at  the  Sorbonne,  —  the  University  of 
France,  —  was  a  European  in  the  variety  and  ex 
tent  of  his  education  and  the  purest  of  Ameri 
cans  by  blood,  as  his  name  proclaimed.  Nearly  of 
Lodge's  age,  almost  identical  in  tastes  and  con 
victions,  and  looking  forward  to  much  the  same 


46  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

career,  he  and  his  companionship  were  among  those 
rare  fortunes  that  sometimes  bless  unusually  fa 
vored  youth  when  it  needs,  more  than  all  else,  the 
constant  contact  with  its  kind. 


CHAPTER  III 


EARLY  in  his  college  course,  the  young  man  had 
acquired  a  taste  for  Schopenhauer.  The  charm  of 
Schopenhauer  is  due  greatly  to  his  clearness  of 
thought  and  his  excellence  of  style,  —  merits  rare 
among  German  philosophers,  —  but  another  of 
his  literary  attractions  is  the  strong  bent  of  his 
thought  towards  Oriental  and  especially  Buddhis 
tic  ideals  and  methods.  At  about  the  same  time  it 
happened  that  Sturgis  Bigelow  returned  to  Boston 
from  a  long  residence  in  Japan,  and  brought  with 
him  an  atmosphere  of  Buddhistic  training  and 
esoteric  culture  quite  new  to  the  realities  of  Boston 
and  Cambridge.  The  mystical  side  of  religion  had 
vanished  from  the  Boston  mind,  if  it  ever  existed 
there,  which  could  have  been  at  best,  only  in  a 
most  attenuated  form;  and  Boston  was  as.  fresh 
wax  to  new  impressions.  The  oriental  ideas  were 
full  of  charm,  and  the  oriental  training  was  full 


48  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

of  promise.  Young  Lodge,  tormented  by  the  old 
problems  of  philosophy  and  religion,  felt  the  influ 
ence  of  Sturgis  Bigelow  deeply,  for  Bigelow  was  the 
closest  intimate  of  the  family,  and  during  the  sum 
mer  his  island  of  Tuckanuck,  near  Nantucket,  was 
the  favorite  refuge  and  resource  for  the  Lodges.  As 
time  went  on,  more  and  more  of  the  young  man's 
letters  were  addressed  to  Bigelow. 

Returning  home  after  the  winter  of  1895-96  in 
Paris,  he  found  himself  more  than  ever  harrowed 
by  the  conflict  of  interests  and  tastes.  He  went 
to  Newport  in  August,  for  a  few  days,  and  rebelled 
against  all  its  standards.  "I  hate  the  philistine- 

plutocrat  atmosphere  of  this  place,  and  it  tends 

x 

not  to  diminish  my  views  anent  modern  civiliza 
tion  and  the  money  power.  I  sincerely  thank  God 
I  shall  never  be  a  rich  man,  and  never  will  I,  if 
my  strength  holds.  The  world  cannot  be  fought 
with  its  own  weapons;  David  fought  Goliath  with 
a  sling,  and  the  only  way  to  kill  the  world  is  to  fight 
it  with  one's  own  toy  sword  or  sling,  and  deny 
strenuously  contact  with,  or  participation  in,  the 
power  it  cherishes.  Much  more  of  the  same  nature 


THE  SONG  OF  THE  WAVE  49 

is  yearning  to  be  said,  but  I  will  spare  you.  ...  If 
I  have  n't  it  in  me  to  write  a  poem,  what  a  sordid 
farce  my  life  will  be!"  The  expression  is  strong, 
but  in  reality  the  young  man  had  fairly  reached  the 
point  where  his  life  was  staked  on  literary  success. 
The  bent  of  his  energy  was  fixed  beyond  change, 
and  as  though  he  meant  deliberately  to  make 
change  impossible,  he  returned  to  Europe,  to  pass 
the  next  winter,  1896-97,  in  Berlin. 

A  winter  in  Berlin  is,  under  the  best  of  circum 
stances,  a  grave  strain  on  the  least  pessimistic 
temper,  but  to  a  young  poet  of  twenty-two,  fresh 
from  Paris,  and  exuberant  with  the  full  sense 
of  life  and  health,  Berlin  required  a  conscientious 
sense  of  duty  amounting  to  self-sacrifice,  in  order 
to  make  it  endurable.  Socially  it  was  complete 
solitude  except  for  the  presence  of  Cecil  Spring- 
Rice,  an  old  Washington  intimate  then  in  the 
British  Embassy.  As  a  matter  of  education  in  art 
or  literature,  the  study  of  German  had  never  been 
thought  essential  to  poets,  or  even  to  prose  writers, 
in  the  English  language;  and  although,  at  about 
the  middle  of  the  century,  many  of  the  best  Eng- 


50  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

lish  and  French  authors,  and  some  American,  had 
insisted  that  no  trained  student  could  afford  to  be 
ignorant  of  so  important  a  branch  of  human  effort, 
none  had  ever  imposed  it  on  their  pupils  as  a 
standard  of  expression.  In  that  respect,  a  serious 
devotion  to  the  language  was  likely  to  do  more 
harm  than  good. 

The  New  England  conscience  is  responsible  for 
much  that  seems  alien  to  the  New  England  nature. 
Naturally,  young  Lodge  would  have  gone  to  Rome 
to  study  his  art,  and  no  doubt  he  would  have 
greatly  preferred  it.  He  needed  to  fill  out  his  edu 
cation  on  that  side,  —  not  on  the  side  of  Ger 
many,  — and  his  future  work  suffered  for  want  of 
the  experience.  If  he  went  to  Berlin,  he  did  it  be 
cause  in  some  vague  way  he  hoped  that  Germany 
might  lead  to  practical  work.  His  letters  show  the 
strenuous  conscientiousness  with  which  he  labored 
through  the  task. 

TO   HIS  MOTHER 

BERLIN,  January,  1897. 

It 's  a  week  now  since  I  wrote  you  and  I ' ve  not 
much  more  news  than  I  had.  I  am  very  well  off 


THE  SONG  OF  THE  WAVE  51 

here.  All  German  bedrooms  are  bad  and  mine  no 
worse  than  the  rest,  I  imagine  —  large  enough  for 
a  bed  and  two  tables  for  my  books  and  papers,  a 
porcelain  stove  and  bureau,  washstand,  etc.  To  be 
sure,  it  has  but  one  window,  through  which,  by 
leaning  uncomfortably  to  one  side,  one  can  per 
ceive  the  withered  corner  of  a  gray  garden,  but 
otherwise  facing  a  dirty  wall  of  brick.  But,  as  I 
say,  it  seems  this  is  a  chronic  malady  of  German 
bedrooms,  and  besides  I  have  the  use  of  a  very 
pleasant  front  room  where  I  work  in  the  morning, 
and  afternoon,  too,  sometimes.  The  people  here 
are  very  nice,  and  eager  to  make  me  comfortable; 
otherwise  all  my  news  is  contained  in  the  word 
work.  Nearer  ten  hours  than  eight  of  this  have  I 
done  every  day  —  written  translations  from  Ger 
man,  reading  of  German  Grammar,  reading  Schil 
ler  with  the  man  or  his  Frau,  talking,  going  to  the 
theatre,  — "Faust,"  "The  Winter's  Tale,"  very 
good,  and  a  translation  of  the  "Dindon,"  etc.  All 
German,  you  observe,  and  in  fact  it  seemed  best 
at  first  to  let  Greek  and  everything  go,  and  devote 
every  energy  to  the  acquisition  of  this  tongue  — 


52  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

infernally  hard  it  is  too.  I  found,  right  off,  I  did  n't 
know  anything  about  it,  and  since  then  have  really 
made  a  good  deal  of  progress. 

It's  wonderful  how  the  soul  clears  itself  up  in 
this  sort  of  solitude  in  which  I  am  living  —  picks 
up  all  the  ravelled  threads  and  weaves  them  care 
fully  together  again,  and  gradually  simplifies  and 
straightens  itself  out.  All  my  life  since  last  April 
I  have  been  going  over,  as  I  have  some  of  my  poems, 
forcing  the  events  into  sequence  and  building  a 
sort  of  soul-history,  fibrous  and  coherent.  It's  a 
wonderful  clearing  out  of  refuse,  and  I  feel  strong 
and  self-reliant  as  I  never  did  before.  I  have  ac 
quired  the  ability  to  write  over  poetry  and  work  it 
into  shape,  which  is  a  great  step  forward,  I  believe, 
and  several  of  my  poems  have  I  been  over  in  this 
way  with  much  advantage.  And  so  I  am  almost 
childlishly  contented  at  getting  back  to  an  exist 
ence  of  sleep  and  food  at  a  minimum  and  work  at 
a  maximum,  and  I  really  think  I  have  never 
worked  harder  or  lived  more  utterly  simply.  And 
oh!  It  is  good  with  the  entire  spiritual  solitude 
and  mental  solitude  that  I  abide  in. 


THE  SONG  OF  THE  WAVE  53 

BERLIN,  January  17,  1897. 

I  am  now,  after  infinite  pains  and  vast  expense, 
matriculate  at  the  University  here,  with  several 
large  and  most  beautiful  diplomas  certifying  in 
Latin  that  I  am  in  fact  matriculate.  The  diplomas 
alone  are  worth  the  price  of  admission.  It  was 
heavy,  though  —  four  solid  mornings'  work  and 
about  75  marks.  First  I  went  with  the  man  I  am 
living  with,  and  found  I  could  n't  hear  any  lectures 
at  all  unless  I  did  matriculate  and  that  to  matricu 
late  I  had  to  have  my  degree  from  Cambridge, 
which  I  had  carefully  left  at  home.  Then  the  next 
day  I  went  to  the  Embassy  and  found  Mr.  Jack 
son,  who  had  very  kindly  written  me  a  letter  al 
ready,  saying  he  hoped  I  would  come  to  see  him 
when  I  wanted  to.  Well,  Mr.  Jackson  gave  me  a 
letter  certifying  that  I  had  a  degree,  and  with  this 
and  my  passport  I  went  again  to  the  University, 
and  found  I  was  too  late  that  day  and  must  come 
the  next.  So  the  next  —  this  time  alone  —  I  went 
and  passed  —  oh,  such  a  morning!  First  I  sat  in 
a  room  while  the  Rector  went  over  my  papers;  then 
I  and  two  Germans  were  called  in  to  the  Rector 


54  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

and  he  gave  us  handsome  degrees  and  swore  us  to 
obedience  to  all  the  rules  of  the  University,  and 
then  we  shook  hands  with  him.  Then  some  one 
said,  "Go  to  room  4."  So  I  and  the  two  Germans 
went,  and  there  they  wrote  my  name  and  birth 
place  and  papa's  business,  which  I  tried  to  explain 
and  failed,  and  so  he  is  registered  in  the  Berlin 
University  as  anything  from  a  coal-heaver  up. 

All  this  time  my  nerves  were  rasping  like  taxed 
wires  for  fear  I  should  n't  understand  what  was 
said  to  me. 

And  then  I  wrote  my  own  name,  birthplace,  etc., 
in  my  own  sweet  hand  in  another  big  book,  and 
then  was  given  a  little  card  where  I  wrote  my  name 
again,  and  a  huge  card  filled  with  questions.  When 
I  understood  them  I  answered;  when  not,  I  put 
"ja"  and  "nein"  alternately.  Then  they  said, 
"Go  to  room  15."  So  I  went  and  gave  a  man  my 
filled-out  card  and  he  wrote  something  which  he 
gave  me  and  said,  "Go  to  room  4  zurtick";  so  I 
went.  There  I  got  a  book  and  another  card, — the 
last  one,  —  and  then  I  filled  out  all  sorts  of  things 
in  the  book  and  finally  went  to  room  2,  where  I 


THE  SONG  OF  THE  WAVE  55 

paid  out  vast  sums,  got  some  receipts,  and  —  left, 
a  shattered  man  in  mind  and  soul.  The  strain  of 
trying  to  understand  and  write  correctly  and  being 
always  afraid  you  won't  is  really  terrible.  Then 
to-day  I  had  to  go  again  to  see  the  Dean  of  the 
Philosophical  Department  in  which  I  matriculated, 
and  he  gave  me  another  beautiful  degree.  And 
now  it's  all  over.  I  am  an  academischer  Biirger, 
and  if  the  police  try  to  arrest  me  all  I've  got  to  do 
is  to  show  my  card  and  they  can't  touch  me.  .  .  . 
This  place  is  gray,  gray,  gray.  I  have  done  a 
constant  stream  of  work,  which  has  flowed  in  a 
steady  and  almost  uninterrupted  course,  with  six 
hours'  sleep-interval  in  the  twenty-four.  I  have 
been  theatre-going  a  lot.  I  have  seen  a  good  deal 
of  Shakespeare,  Schiller,  and  Sudermann. 


BERLIN,  January  26,  1897. 

It  is  for  the  best  my  being  here,  of  that  rest  as 
sured.  I  am  entirely  convinced  that  it  was  and  is 
the  very  best  thing  possible  for  me  in  the  circum 
stances,  and  I  find  sufficient  content  and  interest, 
and  especially  work,  to  keep  me  far  from  stagnant. 


56  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

As  I  wrote  you,  I  feel  a  sense  of  increased  strength 
and  reliance,  which  I  don't  explain  and  don't  try 
to.  Sufficient  that  so  it  is.  Much  of  my  life  have 
I  overlooked  and  condemned  and  profited  by  in 
this  solitude  and  I  finally  begin  to  feel  a  certain 
strength  that  I  trust  will  urge  into  expression  fit 
and  simple  and  sufficient  one  day,  and  not  be 
trampled  under  in  this  awful  struggle  to  acquire  a 
financial  independence  which  I  see  is  inevitable  for 
me.  Writing  prose  is  the  only  utterly  depressing 
thing  I  have  done,  and  that,  D.  V.,  I  shall  learn  by 
mere  gritting  of  teeth. 

I ' ve  this  moment  got  back  from  Dresden,  where 
I've  been  since  Friday  with  Springy 1 — a  little  va 
cation.  It's  very  pretty  and  the  gallery  very  won 
derful.  Naturally  there  I  spent  my  days,  and  twice 
I  went  to  the  opera. 

BERLIN,  February  9,  1897. 

I  have  written  some  new  verse  and  written  over 
with  much  time  and  labor  a  good  deal  more  old. 
It's  with  the  greatest  difficulty  that  I  can  take  any 
1  Cecil  Spring-Rice. 


THE  SONG  OF  THE  WAVE  57 

other  form  of  literary  endeavor  seriously;  and  put 
my  heart  in  it,  I  can't.  I  live  and  breathe  in  an 
atmosphere  of  imagination  and  verse  here,  all  alone 
when  I  am  not  a  working-machine,  and  it's  all 
around  me  like  a  garment.  It's  hard  to  express 
what  I  mean  —  but  the  other  day  I  went  early  to 
the  University  and  saw  a  radiant  sunrise  through 
the  snowy  Thiergarten  and  sort  of  sang  inside  all 
the  rest  of  the  day  —  odd  rhythms  with  here  and 
there  a  word.  I  was  so  content  I  did  n't  even  want 
to  write  down  anything.  I  wonder  if  you  have  ever 
had  the  feeling  —  I  suppose  you  have  —  of  having 
a  beautiful  thing  compose  the  scatteredness  of 
your  mind  into  an  order,  a  rhythm,  so  that  you 
think  and  feel  everything  rhythmically.  My  ex 
pression  is  weak,  but  if  you've  had  it  you'll  know 
what  I  mean. 

I  saw  the  whole  of  "Wallenstein"  the  other 
day  —  or  rather  in  two  successive  evenings  — 
first  the  "Lager"  and  the  " Picolomini,"  and  sec 
ond  evening  the  "Tod,"  which  is  certainly  very 
fine  —  both  dramatically  and  poetically,  —  quite 
the  biggest  German  play  I've  seen.  I'm  reading 


58  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

"Faust"  with  my  teacher  here,  and  admiring  very 
much  of  it. 

BERLIN,  February,  1897. 

I  have  been  reading  over  some  of  Schopenhauer 
and  Kant  in  the  German  and  enjoying  it  im 
mensely.  I  think  the  study  and  pursuit  of  pure 
metaphysical  thought  makes  a  man  more  content 
edly,  peacefully  happy  than  any  other  thing.  There 
is  a  white  purity  consisting  in  its  utter  lack  of  con 
nection  to  the  particular,  in  its  entire  devotion 
to  the  pure,  synthetical  ideas  which  never  touch 
the  feeling,  individual  world,  which  makes  meta 
physics  the  nearest  approach  to  will-lessness,  to 
pure  intellectual  contemplation,  that  I  know.  And 
of  course,  as  all  suffering  is  willful  (in  its  essential 
meaning)  and  emotional,  pure  intellectual  contem 
plation  must  be  that  privation  of  suffering  in  which 
happiness  consists  —  for  I  become  more  than  ever 
convinced  that  in  this  world  of  evil  and  separation 
happiness  is  only  the  privation  of  pain  as  good  is 
the  privation  of  evil.  'Tis  only  the  transcendent 
'  emotion  that  you  get  in  poetry  or  in  great  passions 
such  as  pity  and  love,  that  can  be  called  positive 


THE  SONG  OF  THE  WAVE  59 

happiness.  Pity  or  love,  I  mean,  so  aggrandized 
that  the  sense  of  individuality  is  lost  in  the  feeling 
of  union  with  the  whole  where  there  is  no  space  or 
time  or  separation.  That  is,  that  only  morally  and 
esthetically  can  one  be  positively  happy  —  all 
other  happiness  must  be  simply  the  denial  of  pain. 
Metaphysics  is  the  completest  expression  of  such 
a  denial,  I  think,  and  also  with  an  almost  esthetic 
poetic  value  some  times  —  in  some  metaphysi 
cians  an  undoubted  poetic  value,  as  for  instance  in 
Plato  and  Schopenhauer.  But  it  seems  I  am  writ 
ing  you  an  essay  on  metaphysics,  so  I  will  stop. 

BERLIN,  February,  late,  1897. 

I  am  gradually  digging  a  way  into  the  language, 
and  you'd  be  suprised  at  my  fluent  inaccuracy 
in  the  German  tongue,  and  I  can  write  it  pretty 
well,  too.  Reading  is  thoroughly  acquired,  and  I 
am  more  than  satisfied  with  my  progress.  I  have 
heard  a  good  deal  of  music  which  always  does  me 
good,  though,  as  Joe  tells  me,  I  don't  in  the  least 
understand  it.  I  saw  the  Emperor  the  other  day  for 
the  first  time,  and  rather  a  fine  strong  face  he  has. 


60  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

I  really  believe  that  nothing  I  ever  did  benefited 
me  as  much  as  has  this  short  time  here.  I  have 
grown  more  rigid  and  surer  of  myself,  and  withal 
have  acquired  a  certain  capacity  and  love  of  a  great 
deal  of  work,  which  I  never  had  before,  and  which 
is  only  surpassed  by  my  love  of  not  doing  work 
after  I  have  done  a  great  deal.  My  poetry,  I  think, 
shows  that  —  I  have  tried  to  hope  so.  Please  tell 
me  if  you  think  any  of  the  things  I  sent  you  show 
a  clearer,  firmer  touch  than  before.  As  I  say,  I  try 
to  think  so  and  almost  feel  sometimes  as  if  it 
really  was  in  me  after  all  to  speak  a  strong  sincere 
word  clearly  for  men  to  hear;  but  then,  on  the  other 
hand,  whiles  I  think  I  am  going  to  dry  up,  and  in 
my  perfectly  lucid  moments,  I  see  with  a  ghostly 
distinctness  how  far  short  all  my  work  falls  of  what 
I  seem  sometimes  to  know  as  an  ideal. 

The  dear  Springy  came  to  see  me  yesterday  and 
I  had  a  good  talk  with  him  and  subsequently  dined 
with  him.  I  Ve  seen  very  little  of  him  this  month, 
as  society  has  been  on  the  rampage,  and  he  has 
rampaged  with  it  perforce.  He  went  to  London 
for  a  week  to-day,  but  when  he  comes  back,  the 


THE  SONG  OF  THE  WAVE  61 

world  will  be  quiet  and  I  expect  to  see  a  great 
deal  of  him. 

The  German  experience  added  little  or  nothing 
to  his  artistic  education,  for  Schopenhauer  can  be 
studied  anywhere,  and  neither  Goethe  nor  Schiller 
needs  to  be  read  in  Berlin;  but  his  letters  show  that 
his  enforced,  solitary  labor  during  this  winter  threw 
him  back  upon  himself,  and  led  him  to  publish  his 
work  before  he  fairly  knew  in  what  direction  his 
strength  lay.  During  these  three  years  of  post-grad 
uate  education  he  had  toiled,  with  sure  instinct,  to 
learn  the  use  of  his  tools,  and  chiefly  of  his  tongue. 
All  art-students  must  go  through  this  labor,  and 
probably  the  reason  why  so  many  young  poets 
begin  by  writing  sonnets  is  that  the  sonnet  is  the 
mode  of  expression  best  adapted  for  practice;  it 
insists  on  high  perfection  in  form;  any  defect  or 
weakness  betrays  itself,  and  the  eye  can  cover  four 
teen  lines  at  once  without  too  great  an  effort.  Lodge 
liked  the  labor  of  sonnet- writing,  and  it  taught  him 
the  intricacies  of  language  and  the  refinements  of 
expression  which  every  literary  artist  must  try  at 


62  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

!/  least  to  understand,  even  when  he  does  not  choose 
to  practise  them;  but,  at  heart,  Lodge  was  less  a 
poet  than  a  dramatist,  though  he  did  not  yet  know 
it;  and  the  dramatic  art  is  the  highest  and  most  ex 
acting  in  all  literature.  The  crown  of  genius  belongs 
only  to  the  very  rare  poets  who  have  written 
successful  plays.  They  alone  win  the  blue  ribbon 
of  literature.  This  was  the  prize  to  which  Lodge, 
perhaps  unconsciously,  aspired,  and  his  labor  in 
sonnet-writing,  however  useful  as  training  in  verse, 
was  no  great  advantage  for  his  real  purpose,  even 
though  he  had  Shakespeare  for  his  model. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  lack  of  society  in  a  man 
ner  compels  the  artist  to  publish  before  he  is  ready. 
The  artist,  living  in  a  vacuum  without  connection 
with  free  air,  is  forced  by  mere  want  of  breath  to 

'  cry  out  against  the  solitude  that  stifles  him;  and 
the  louder  he  cries,  the  better  is  his  chance  of 
attracting  notice.  The  public  resents  the  outcry, 
but  remembers  the  name.  A  few  —  very  few  — 
readers  appreciate  the  work,  if  it  is  good,  on  its 
merits;  but  the  poet  himself  gets  little  satisfac 
tion  from  it,  and,  ten  years  afterwards,  will  pro- 


THE  SONG  OF  THE  WAVE  63 

bably  think  of  it  only  as  a  premature  effort  of  his 
youth. 

To  this  rule  a  few  exceptions  exist,  like  Swin 
burne's  "Poems  and  Ballads,"  where  the  poet,  at 
the  first  breath,  struck  a  note  so  strong  and  so  new 
as  to  overpower  protest;  but,  as  a  rule,  recognition 
is  slow,  and  the  torpor  of  the  public  serves  only  to 
discourage  the  artist,  who  would  have  saved  his 
strength  and  energy  had  he  waited.  When  young 
Lodge  returned  from  Germany  in  the  summer  of 
1897,  he  felt  himself  unpleasantly  placed  between 
these  two  needs, — that  of  justifying  his  existence, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  that  of  challenging  prema 
ture  recognition,  on  the  other.  He  chose  boldly  to 
assert  his  claims  to  literary  rank,  and  justified  his 
challenge  by  publishing,  in  the  spring  of  1898,  the 
volume  of  a  hundred  and  thirty-five  pages,  called 
"The  Song  of  the  Wave." 

Here  are  some  eighty  short  poems,  one  half  of 
which  are  sonnets,  and  all  of  which  reflect  the  long 
tentative,  formative  effort  of  the  past  five  years. 
Most  of  them  have  a  personal  character,  like  "  The 
Song  of  the  Wave"  itself,  which  has  been  already 


64  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

quoted.  From  a  simple,  vigorous  nature  like 
Lodge's,  one  would  have  expected,  in  a  first  effort, 
some  vehement  or  even  violent  outburst  of  self-as 
sertion;  some  extravagance,  or  some  furious  protest 
against  the  age  he  lived  in;  but  such  an  attitude  is 
hardly  more  than  indicated  by  the  dedication  to 
Leopardi.  The  exordium,  "Speak,  said  my  soul!" 
expresses  rather  his  own  need  of  strength  and  the 
solitude  of  his  ambitions:  — 

Speak!  thou  art  lonely  in  thy  chilly  mind, 
With  all  this  desperate  solitude  of  wind, 
The  solitude  of  tears  that  make  thee  blind,   , 

Of  wild  and  causeless  tears. 

Speak!  thou  hast  need  of  me,  heart,  hand  and  head, 
Speak,  if  it  be  an  echo  of  thy  dread, 
A  dirge  of  hope,  of  young  illusions  dead,  — 

Perchance  God  hears! 

Most  of  these  poems  are  echoes  of  early  youth, 
of  the  ocean,  of  nature:  simple  and  vigorous  ex 
pressions  of  physical  force,  with  an  occasional  re 
currence  to  Schopenhauer  and  Leopardi;  but  the 
verses  that  most  concern  the  artist  are  those  which 
show  his  effort  for  mastery  of  his  art,  and  his  pro 
gress  in  power  of  expression.  He  scattered  such 


THE  SONG  OF  THE  WAVE  65 

verses  here  and  there,  for  their  own  sake,  on  nearly 
every  page,  as  most  young  poets  do,  or  try  to  do, 
and  such  verses  are  more  or  less  a  measure,  not  only 
of  his  correctness  of  ear,  but  of  his  patient  labor. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  first  half-dozen  lines  of 
"The  Gates  of  Life,"  which  happens  to  be  written 
in  a  familiar  metre:  — 

Held  in  the  bosom  of  night,  large  to  the  limits  of  wonder, 
Close  where  the  refluent  seas  wrinkle  the  wandering  sands, 
Where,  with  a  tenderness  torn  from  the  secrets  of  sorrow,  and 

under 

The  pale  pure  spaces  of  night  felt  like  ineffable  hands, 
The  weak  strange  pressure  of  winds  moved  with  the  moving  of 

waters, 
Vast  with  their  solitude,  sad  with  their  silences,  strange  with 

their  sound, 
Comes  like  a  sigh  from  the  sleep  .  .  . 

This  metre  seems  to  call  for  excessive  elabora 
tion  of  phrase;  a  few  pages  further,  the  poet  has 
tried  another  metre  which  repels  all  such  refine 
ments;  it  is  called  "Age,"  and  begins:  - 

Art  thou  not  cold  ? 

Brother,  alone  to-night  on  God's  great  earth  ? 

The  two  last  stanzas  run:  — 


66  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Shalt  thou  not  die, 

Brother  ?  the  chill  is  fearful  on  thy  life, 

Shalt  thou  not  die  ? 

Is  this  a  lie  ? 

This  threadbare  hope  —  of  death  ? 

A  lie,  like  God,  and  human  love,  and  strife 

For  pride,  and  fame,  —  this  soiled  and  withered  wreath. 

Art  thou  not  cold  ? 

Brother  ?  alone  on  God's  great  earth  to-night; 

Art  thou  not  cold  ? 

Art  thou  not  old 

And  dying  and  forlorn  ? 

Art  thou  not  choking  in  the  last  stern  fight 

While  in  divine  indifference  glows  the  morn  ? " 

The  sonnet,  again,  offers  a  different  temptation. 
The  verses  tend  of  their  own  accord  to  group  them 
selves  about  the  favorite  verse.  The  first  sonnet  in 
this  series  begins  with  what  Mrs.  Wharton  calls 
the  magnificent  apostrophe  to  Silence:  — 

Lord  of  the  deserts,  'twixt  a  million  spheres,  — 

and  need  go  no  further;  the  rest  of  the  lines  infalli 
bly  group  themselves  to  sustain  the  level  of  the 
first.  So,  the  sonnet  to  his  own  Essex  begins  with 
the  singularly  happy  line,  — 


THE  SONG  OF  THE  WAVE  67 

Thy  hills  are  kneeling  in  the  tardy  spring,  — 
which  leads  to  an  echo  in  the  last  verse:  — 

We  know  how  wanton  and  how  little  worth 
Are  all  the  passions  of  our  bleeding  heart 
That  vex  the  awful  patience  of  the  earth. 

The  sonnet  to  his  friend  Stickney  after  reading 
the  twelfth-century  Roman  of  "Amis  and  Amile," 
begins :  — 

And  were  they  friends  as  thou  and  I  are  friends,  — 

in  order  to  work  out  the  personal  touch  of  their 
common  ambition:  — 

Ah,  they  who  walked  the  sunshine  of  the  world, 
And  heard  grave  angels  speaking  through  a  dream, 
Had  never  their  unlaurelled  brows  defiled, 
Nor  strove  to  stem  the  world's  enormous  stream. 

The  form  of  the  sonnet  tends  to  carry  such 
verbal  or  personal  refinements  to  excess;  they  be 
come  labored;  perhaps  particularly  so  in  denun 
ciation,  like  the  sonnet,  "Aux  Modernes,"  which 
begins :  — 

Only  an  empty  platitude  for  God; 

and  ends  with  the  line, — 

The  hard,  gray,  tacit  distances  of  dawn. 


68  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Such  work  marks  the  steps  of  study  and  attain 
ment  rather  than  attainment  itself,  as  the  second 
"Nirvana"  marks  effort:  — 

TO   W.   STURGIS   BIGELOW 

December  10,  1897. 

I  will  trouble  you  with  this  poem,  which  here  I 
send  to  you.  I  wrote  it  without  correction  in  half 
an  hour  before  dinner,  and  I  feel  of  it,  as  I  have  felt 
of  so  many  of  my  things,  that  no  one  will  under 
stand  it  except  you;  also  I  know  it's  my  fault  and 
not  theirs  that  no  one  will  understand  it  —  my  im 
plements  are  still  so  rude  —  my  ideas  seem  lumi 
nous  and  limpid  while  they  are  wordless,  and,  I 
think,  owing  to  practice,  most  ideas  come  to  me 
now  wordless  —  but  in  words  they  become  crude, 
misty,  and  imperfect;  whiles  I  feel  quite  hopeless. 
But  you  have  been  there,  have  seen  vividly  all 
I  Ve  half  perceived  and  you  can  supply  my  lapses 
in  coherency.  This  was,  I  think,  the  result  of  an 
hour's  practice  last  night.  Certainly  if  it  has  a 
merit,  it  is  that  I  have  not  been  economical  in  this 
poem,  every  word  seems  to  me  now  over-full  with 


THE  SONG  OF  THE  WAVE  69 

meaning.  My  soul  has  gone  into  the  writing  of  it 
and,  good  Lord,  it's  melancholy  to  feel  how  it 
might  have  been  said  —  luminously  and  unavoid 
ably  —  and  how  it  is  said  —  Well!  perhaps,  some 
day!  .  .  .  if  I  could  only  be  with  you  to  try  to  tell 
you  all  I  have  endeavored  to  say  in  these  fourteen 
lines ! 

NIRVANA 

Woof  of  the  scenic  sense,  large  monotone 
Where  life's  diverse  inceptions,  Death  and  Birth, 
Where  all  the  gaudy  overflow  of  Earth 
Die  —  they  the  manifold,  and  thou  the  one. 

Increate,  complete,  when  the  stars  are  gone 
In  cinders  down  the  void,  when  yesterday 
No  longer  spurs  desire  starvation-gray, 
When  God  grows  mortal  hi  men's  hearts  of  stone; 

As  each  pulsation  of  the  heart  divine 
Peoples  the  chaos,  or  with  falling  breath 
Beggars  creation,  still  the  soul  is  thine! 

And  still,  untortured  by  the  world's  increase, 
Thy  wide  harmonic  silences  of  death. 
And  last  —  thy  white,  uncovered  breast  of  peace! 

I  will  now,  as  did  Michael  Angelo,  add  a  com 
mentary: — 
Nirvana  is  the  woof  on  which  sense  traces  its 


70  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

scenic  patterns;  it  is  the  one,  the  monotone  upon 
which  death  and  birth,  both  inceptions,  in  that 
death  is  merely  the  beginning  of  changed  condi 
tions  of  life,  and  "the  gaudy  overflow  of  earth" — 
that  is,  all  finite  things  and  emotions  —  sing  their 
perishable  songs  and,  as  rockets  disperse  their 
million  sparks  which  die  on  the  universal  night- 
blackness,  so  they  die  and  leave  the  constant  un 
changing  monotone.  Nirvana  is  in-create  because 
never  created,  and  of  course  complete.  Yesterday 
spurs  desire  to  a  state  of  starvation-grayness  be 
cause  desire  and  hope  look  back  on  every  yesterday 
as  a  renewed  disappointment.  The  phrase  meant 
life.  "  When  God  grows  mortal  in  men's  hearts  of 
stone,"  has  two  meanings,  first  that  when  men 
grow  unbelieving  God  perishes  —  God  being  the 
creature  of  belief;  and  second  that  Nirvana  endur- 
eth  when  God  himself  perishes.  The  next  three 
lines  are  an  embodiment  of  the  idea  that  with  every 
beat  of  the  heart  divine  a  cosmos  swells  into  exist 
ence,  and  with  every  subsiding  of  this  heart  it 
sinks,  perishes  into  nothingness.  Also  from  line 
five  to  line  eleven  means  that  after  everything  and 


THE  SONG  OF  THE  WAVE  71 

through  everything  the  soul  is  still  Nirvana's,  if  I 
can  so  express  myself;  thus  reiterating  the  idea 
suggested  in  the  first  quatrain,  that  the  condition 
of  the  finite  is  separateness  and  of  the  spiritual, 
unity;  and  that  all  life,  though  clothed  in  diverse 
forms,  holds  in  it  the  identical  soul  which  is  Nir 
vana's,  attained  or  potential.  The  world's  increase 
is  of  course  the  cycle  of  life  and  death  in  its  largest 
sense.  This  is  of  course  a  mere  shadowing  forth  of 
the  ideas  I  had  in  writing  the  poem.  You  will  see 
their  possible  amplifications. 

January,  1898. 

Poetry  is  an  absolute  necessity  for  me,  but  when 
I  think  of  dumping  a  volume  of  verse  that  nobody 
will  read  on  to  a  gorged  world,  I  say  to  myself: 
"A  quoi  bon?"  The  foolish  publisher  will  have  to 
be  found  first,  however,  so  I  don't  worry.  Does 
the  enclosed  ("The  Wind  of  Twilight  —  Tucka- 
nuck")  say  anything  to  you?  The  long  things 
(Oh,  be  thankful)  are  too  long  to  send,  so  I  send 
this.  I  've  done  several  of  these  sorts  of  things 
lately. 


72  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

To  the  cold  critic,  this  stage  of  an  artist's  life  is 
the  most  sympathetic,  and  the  one  over  which  he 
would  most  gladly  linger.  He  loves  the  youthful 
freshness,  the  candor,  the  honest  workmanship,  the 
naif  self-abandonment  of  the  artist,  in  proportion 
as  he  is  weary  of  the  air  of  attainment,  of  clever 
ness,  of  certainty  and  completion.  He  would,  for 
his  own  amusement,  go  on  quoting  verse  after 
verse  to  show  how  the  artist  approaches  each 
problem  of  his  art,  what  he  gains;  what  he  sac 
rifices;  but  this  is  the  alphabet  of  criticism,  and 
can  be  practised  on  Eginetan  marbles  or  early 
Rembrandts  better  than  on  youthful  lyrics.  The 
interested  reader  has  only  to  read  for  himself. 


CHAPTER  IV 

WAR  AND   LOVE 

IN  January,  1898,  young  Lodge  was  in  Wash 
ington,  acting  as  secretary  to  his  father,  varying 
between  office-work  all  day  and  composition  the 
greater  part  of  the  night.  The  outbreak  of  the 
Spanish  War  drew  him  at  once  into  the  govern 
ment  service,  and  he  obtained  a  position  as  cadet 
on  board  his  uncle  Captain  Davis's  ship,  the 
Dixie.  During  the  three  summer  months  that 
this  war  in  the  tropics  lasted,  he  had  other  things 
than  poems  to  think  about,  and  his  letters  convey 
an  idea  that  perhaps  the  life  of  naval  officer  actu 
ally  suited  his  inherited  instincts  best. 

TO  HIS  MOTHER 

FORTRESS  MONROE,  May,  1898. 
Here  I  am  and  here  I  rest  until  Saturday,  when 
the  ship  will  probably  sail.   I  am,  and  feel  like,  a 
perfect  fool.   Everybody  knows  everything  and  I 


74  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

don't  know  anything;  but  they  are  kind  and  I 
guess  I  shall  get  on  when  the  thing  gets  fairly 
started.  I  went  over  and  saw  the  ship  to-day 
and  she  is  fine  —  at  any  rate  while  I  am  here  in 
this  business,  I  am  going  to  learn  all  I  can. 

NEWPORT  NEWS,  May  20,  1898. 
I  am  getting  on  as  well  as  possible  and  learning 
a  good  deal  all  the  time.  There  is  plenty  of  room 
for  learning.  These  great  golden  days  go  over  me, 
and  it  seems  as  if  all  the  real  imaginative  side  of 
me  was  under  lock  and  key.  The  practical  things 
occupy  me  entirely. 

FORTRESS  MONROE,  June  2, 1898. 
We  have  been  taking  on  coal  all  day,  and  before 
it's  all  aboard  we  shall  be  chock-full.  Uncle  Harry 
has  got  orders  to  be  ready  to  sail  at  a  moment's  no 
tice,  and  he  is  going  to  telegraph  to-night  that  he 
is  all  ready.  I  hope  it  may  mean  that  we  are  to  be 
moved  out  of  here  very  soon  toward  the  scene  of 
action.  A  day  or  two  ago  we  went  out  for  thirty- 
six  hours  and  fired  all  the  big  guns.  I  fired  both 
mine  myself,  and  was  surprised  to  find  the  shock 


WAR  AND  LOVE  75 

not  at  all  serious.  The  whole  process  was  very 
interesting,  and  I  shall  try  to  remember  it  all  and 
be  able  to  tell  you  all  about  it  when  I  get  back.  I 
get  on  pretty  well.  There  is  one  thing  I  am  con 
vinced  of  and  that  is  that  I  can  make  my  gun 
crews  fight  and  my  guns  effective,  and  that  is  after 
all  the  principal  thing. 

The  internal  condition  of  Spain  makes  me  be 
lieve  that  the  war  must  end  soon.  I  only  hope  it 
will  last  long  enough  to  insure  our  possession  of 
Cuba,  Porto  Rico,  and  the  Philippines,  and  give 
me  one  fight  for  my  money. 

OFF  CIENFUEGOS,  CUBA,  June  25,  1898. 

We  reached  the  squadron  the  day  after  I  wrote 
from  Mole  St.  Nicolas,  and  were  immediately 
sent  down  here  to  patrol.  In  fact,  the  Admiral 
gave  Uncle  Harry  discretion  to  do  pretty  much 
what  he  ple'ased.  We  came  down  and  on  our  way 
destroyed  two  block-houses  which  were  at  the 
southern  end  of  the  Trocha.  The  next  day  we  en 
gaged  a  battery  at  a  place  called  Trinidad,  and 
yesterday  we  engaged  the  same  battery,  a  gun- 


76  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

boat  in  the  harbor,  and  a  gun-boat  that  came  out 
at  us,  and  used  them  up  pretty  badly.  So  you  see 
I  am  in  it.  Nothing  very  serious  so  far,  but  still  we 
have  been  under  fire  and  have  killed  a  good  many 
Spaniards.  It  is  a  most  beautiful  coast  all  along 
here,  great  splendid  hills  close  to  the  water's  edge, 
and  splendid  vegetation.  The  weather  has  been 
hot,  but  very  fine  and  to  me  excessively  pleasant, 
and  I  am  quite  happy  to  be  on  the  scene  of  action 
and  in  the  way  of  seeing  all  that 's  going.  My  two 
guns  have  behaved  very  well  and  I  have  had  sev 
eral  very  nice  compliments  from  the  First  Lieu 
tenant.  We  relieved  the  Yankee  here  and  she 
goes  to-day  to  Key  West  for  coal,  which  gives  me 
a  chance  to  send  this  letter.  I  really  enjoy  the  life 
immensely,  far  more  than  I  thought  I  should  — 
the  work  interests  me,  and  I  am  learning  a  good 
deal  every  day.  Last  night  Uncle  Harry  and  I 
dined  with  Captain  Brownson  on  the  Yankee  and 
it  was  very  interesting. 

August,  1898. 

Many  thanks  for  your  letter  which  I  have  just 
got  to-day.  I  am  more  than  delighted  we  are  going 


WAR  AND  LOVE  77 

to  Spain.  We  came  up  from  Cape  Cruz  on  the  6th 
and  saw  the  wrecks  of  the  Spanish  fleet  lying  up  on 
the  beach  below  Santiago  —  a  great  sight.  It's  a 
great  business  to  be  here  and  see  the  wheels  go 
round  and  be  a  wheel  one's  self,  even  if  not  a  very 
big  one.  I  am  very  glad  on  the  whole  I  came  as  a 
cadet  and  not  as  an  ensign,  for  as  a  cadet  I  am  not 
supposed  to  know  anything,  which  puts  me  in  a 
true  position  and  not  a  false  one.  None  of  these 
militia  officers  know  any  more  than  I  do,  and  they 
are  in  false  positions.  Anyway,  I  do  a  lot  of  work 
and  I  think  accomplish  something.  It  hardly 
seems  as  if  the  war  could  last  now,  and  I  only 
hope  it  will  hang  on  long  enough  to  give  us  a 
whack  at  Camara  and  the  Spanish  coast. 

Yesterday  we  got  the  first  ice  we  have  had  since 
June  15,  and  to-day  the  first  mail  since  we  left  Old 

Point. 

U.  S.  S.  DIXIE,  August  5,  1898. 

We  left  Guantanamo  after  having  coaled,  and 
went  to  Puerto  Rico  with  the  troops.  On  the  way 
we  were  detached  from  the  convoy  and  sent  all 
round  the  island  to  hunt  up  transports,  and  so  we 


78  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

did  not  get  to  Guanica  until  after  the  army  had 
landed.  We  got  there  in  the  morning,  and  that 
afternoon  we  were  sent  with  the  Annapolis  and  the 
Wasp  —  Uncle  Harry1  being  the  senior  officer — 
down  to  Ponce,  Puerto  Rico.  We  got  there  about 
four  and  went  peacefully  into  the  harbor.  Then 
Uncle  Harry  sent  Mr.  Merriam  2  in  to  demand 
the  surrender  of  the  place,  and  I  went  along.  We 
landed  under  a  flag  of  truce,  and  found  that  there 
was  a  Spanish  Colonel  with  about  300  men,  who 
said  he  would  "die  at  his  post."  He  was  back  in 
the  town,  which  is  about  two  miles  inland.  How 
ever,  during  the  night  delegates  came  off  and  sur 
rendered  the  town,  on  condition  that  the  troops  be 
allowed  to  withdraw,  which  we  granted,  and  at  six 
o'clock  the  next  morning,  we  went  in  again  and  I 
myself  raised  the  flag  over  the  office  of  the  Captain 
of  the  Port,  amid  immense  enthusiasm  of  the  popu 
lace.  Haines,3  the  marine  officer,  was  put  in  charge 
with  a  file  of  marines,  and  put  guards  and  sentries 

1  Captain  Davis,  commanding  the  Dixie. 

2  Lieutenant  and  executive  officer  of  the  Dixie. 
1  Lieutenant  of  Marines  on  the  Dixie. 


WAR  AND  LOVE  79 

on  the  Customs  House  and  other  public  places;  and 
then  two  other  officers  and  I  got  into  a  carriage, 
with  a  Puerto  Rican  friend,  and  drove  up  to  the 
town. 

It  was  most  picturesque.  The  town  had  been 
deserted  fearing  a  bombardment,  and  from  every 
nook  and  corner  crowds  appeared  cheering  and 
crying,  "Viva  los  conquistadores  Americanos"; 
"Viva  el  Puerto  Rico  libre."  We  drove  through  the 
town,  the  crowd  and  enthusiasm  increasing  always, 
and  finally  returned  and  got  Haines,  who  had  for 
mally  delivered  the  town  to  General  Miles  when  he 
landed.  .  .  .  We  then  went  back  to  Ponce  with 
Haines.  We  were  taken  to  the  club  and  to  the 
headquarters  of  the  fire-brigade  —  everywhere 
amid  yelling  mobs.  While  we  were  there  I  heard 
that  there  were  some  political  prisoners  confined 
in  the  City  Hall.  I  told  Haines,  who  was  senior 
officer,  and  he  went  over  to  see  about  liberating 
them. 

Ponce  is  the  largest  town  in  Puerto  Rico,  about 
40,000  people.  The  City  Hall  stands  at  one  end  of 
a  great  square  —  about  as  large  as  Lafayette 


80  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Square.  In  it  is  the  Mayor's  office  and  the  court 
room,  with  a  dais  and  throne  where  the  judges  sat. 
There  Haines  liberated  sixteen  political  prisoners; 
for  the  army,  though  supposed  to  be  in  possession 
of  the  town,  had  not  taken  the  City  Hall.  Finding 
this  to  be  the  case,  I  got  an  American  flag  and  told 
Haines  I  was  going  to  raise  it  over  the  City  Hall.  I 
then  went  onto  the  roof  where  the  flag-staff  was, 
taking  with  me  the  Mayor  of  Ponce.  There  with 
great  solemnity,  the  Mayor  and  I  bare-headed,  I 
raised  the  flag.  The  whole  square  was  swaying 
with  people,  and  as  the  flag  went  up  they  cheered 
—  such  a  noise  as  I  never  heard.  Then  the  Mayor 
and  I  went  below  and  the  Mayor  presented  me 
with  his  staff  of  office,  the  Spanish  flag  which  flew 
over  the  City  Hall,  and  the  banner  of  Ponce,  and 
formally  delivered  over  to  me  his  authority.  I  sent 
to  the  barracks  where  were  our  soldiers,  and  got 
some  over  to  occupy  the  City  Hall.  I  then,  with 
great  ceremony,  gave  back  to  the  Mayor  his  badge 
of  office  and  the  town  of  Ponce.  Shortly  after  we 
left. 


WAR  AND  LOVE  81 

GUANTANAMO   BAY,    CUBA,  August  10,  1898. 

I  got  your  letter  just  a  day  or  two  ago,  and 
mighty  glad  I  was  to  get  it.  The  flagship  has  just 
signalled  "Associated  Press  dispatch  states  that 
peace  protocol  has  been  arranged."  I  suppose  this 
is  the  end.  If  so,  if  hostilities  cease  and  peace  is 
eventually  certain,  I  wish  you  would  find  out  if 
the  Dixie  is  to  be  put  out  of  commission.  I  sup 
pose  it  will  take  three  or  four  months  to  patch 
up  the  treaty  and  have  it  ratified,  and  if  the  Dixie 
is  to  lie  here  or  convoy  transports  during  that  time, 
I  should  like  very  much  to  be  detached  and  ordered 
home  on  waiting  orders,  until  my  resignation  is 
sent  in  and  accepted.  I  suppose  there  would  be  no 
trouble  about  this.  I  came  for  the  war,  and  as  this 
is  n't  and  never  will  be  my  life  when  the  war  is  over, 
I  want  to  get  home  as  soon  as  possible,  and  pick 
up  life  again  where  I  left  off.  Of  course  if  the  Dixie 
is  to  be  put  right  out  of  commission,  I  should  much 
prefer  to  go  out  of  active  service  with  the  ship,  and 
I  should  think  that  the  Department  would  not 
wish  to  keep  these  auxiliary  ships,  manned  with 
militia,  in  service  any  longer  than  was  absolutely 


82  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

necessary.  Well,  I  have  learned  a  good  deal  and  I 
am  mighty  glad  I  came.  I  have  n't  seen  as  much 
fighting  as  some,  but  I  have  had  my  share  of  the 
fun,  I  think,  and  anyway  one  does  one's  best  and 
takes  the  chances  of  war.  I  really  think  I  have 
made  myself  useful,  and  at  least  have  not  encum 
bered  or  hurt  the  service  by  coming,  and  that 's  as 
much  as  an  amateur  can  hope  for.  Anyway  I ' ve 
worked  hard.  I  shall  have  a  great  story  to  tell  you 
about  Ponce,  of  which  "Magna  pars  fui,"  and  I 
have  got  some  splendid  trophies.  I  have  had  a 
good  time  and  am  happy  now;  but  as  peace  grows 
more  certain  I  long  to  get  home  and  see  you  all 
again.  It  seems  an  enormous  stretch  of  time  since 
I  left  you. 

Extract  from  a  letter  of  CAPTAIN  DAVIS  to  H.  c.  L. 

July  20,  1898. 

.  .  .  He  [G.  C.  L.]  shows  unbounded  zeal  and 
unflagging  industry,  and  a  great  aptitude  for  the 
profession.  He  has  already  developed  the  real 
sailor's  trick  of  being  always  the  first  on  hand.  No 
one  has  ever  been  known  to  say,  "Where  is  Mr. 


WAR  AND  LOVE  83 

Lodge  ?  "  This  is  not  the  encomium  of  a  fond  uncle. 
I  see  very  little  of  him  on  duty  except  in  working 
ship,  when  his  station  is  near  mine.  He  is  a  daily 
companion  to  me  in  hours  of  leisure,  but  on  duty 
he  is  the  First  Lieutenant's  man,  and  I  notice  he  is 
always  called  on  for  duty  where  promptness  and 
intelligence  are  required.  I  could  give  you  a  much 
higher  estimate  of  his  usefulness  if  I  quoted  Mer- 
riam,  than  in  recording  my  own  observation. 

Brought  back  again  to  the  chronic  divergence 
between  paths  of  life,  the  young  man  struggled  as 
he  best  could  to  assert  his  mastery  over  his  own 
fate,  and  developed  a  persistence  of  will  that 
amounted  to  primitive  instinct  rather  than  to  rea 
soning  process.  Constantly  he  threw  himself  with 
all  his  energy  in  the  direction  which  led  away 
from  the  regular  paths  of  modern  activity.  He  was 
familiar  with  them  all,  if  only  as  Secretary  of  a 
Senate  Committee,  and  he  read  science  quite  as 
seriously  as  poetry,  but  when  he  came  to  action  he 
always  widened  the  gap  between  himself  and  his 
world.  "The  Song  of  the  Wave"  was  his  first 


84  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

public  act  of  divorce.  Only  the  difficulty  of  find 
ing  a  publisher  prevented  him  from  taking  a  tone 
much  more  hostile  to  society,  in  novels,  which  he 
wrote  and  burned  one  after  another,  because  they 
failed  to  satisfy  him.  His  letters  to  his  early  friend, 
Marjorie  Nott,  have  much  to  say  of  this  phase 
of  mind.  On  September  12,  1899,  he  wrote  from 
Tuckanuck :  — 

TO    MISS    MARJORIE    NOTT 

Why  do  your  letters  make  me  so  needlessly 
happy !  I  think  it 's  because  you  believe  in  so  much 
and  because  I  do  too,  and  need  to  have  some  one 
to  tell  me  that  it  is  so.  Not  that  I  doubt,  —  what 
would  my  life  be  if  I  doubted !  No,  it 's  only  that 
pretty  much  everybody  believes  1 5m  a  crank  or  a 
fool,  or  asks  when  I  'm  going  to  begin  to  do  some 
thing;  — to  which  question,  by  the  way,  I  invari 
ably  respond — never!  and  oh!  it 's  so  good  not  to 
be  on  the  defensive,  not  to  feel  the  good  anger 
rising  in  you,  and  step  on  it  because  you  know  they 
won't  understand;  not  to  suffer  with  the  desire  to 
insult  the  whole  world;  to  lay  its  ugliness  naked; 


WAR  AND  LOVE  85 

to  say:  "There,  there!  don't  you  see  all  the  dust 
and  ashes  that  we're  all  admiring?  don't  you 
see?  don't  you  understand?  "  And  then  not  say  it, 
because  you  know  they  can't  see,  and  they  won't 
understand.  Ah,  yes!  it's  so  good  to  sit  here,  and 
write  all  this  rot  to  you,  and  think  that  you'll 
know,  that  you'll  understand.  Is  n't  it  horrible  to 
get  your  mind  twisted  into  cheap  cynicisms  while 
the  tears  are  falling  in  your  heart?  and  it 's  what  we 
have  to  do,  —  nous  autres !  I  shall  certainly  end 
in  publishing  my  book  if  I  can  find  a  bold  enough 
publisher.  The  temptation  is  too  immense.  I  know 
they  won't  understand,  and  yet  I  'm  young  enough 
to  hope  they  will.  Do  you  remember  the  book  I 
talked  to  you  of  last  winter?  Well,  that's  it!  I  've 
done  it  over  again,  and  —  well!  I  don't  know!  I 
don't  know  why  I  write  all  this.  I  am  here  so  calm, 
with  my  brother  the  sun  and  my  sister  the  sea,  — 
by  the  way,  Tuckanuck,  —  and  I  feel  as  if  I  was 
anywhere  except  in  the  hither  end  of  the  nine 
teenth  century;  and  my  book,  I  don't  think  of  it 
at  all  here.  I  write  verse  now  —  nothing  else. 


86  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Naturally,  since  man  or  bird  began  to  sing,  he 
has  sung  to  the  woman,  —  or  the  female.  The  male 
is  seldom  a  sympathetic  listener;  he  prefers  to  do 
his  own  singing,  or  not  to  sing  at  all.  He  is  not 
much  to  blame,  but  his  indifference  commonly  ends 
by  stifling  the  song,  and  the  male  singer  has  to 
turn  to  the  female,  or  perish.  In  America,  the  male 
is  not  only  a  bad  listener,  but  also,  for  poetry,  a 
distinctly  hostile  audience;  he  thinks  poorly  of 
poetry  and  poets,  so  that  the  singer  has  no  choice 
but  to  appeal  to  the  woman.  That  young  Lodge 
should  have  done  so  with  an  intensity  proportioned 
to  the  repression  of  his  instinct  for  sympathy  and 
encouragement  elsewhere,  was  inevitable.  Poets 
have  always  done  it,  but  they  have  not  shown  by 
any  means  the  surest  instinct  of  poetry  in  their 
affairs  of  love,  so  that  perhaps  a  woman  who  should 
criticise  their  work  might  feel  tempted  to  use  this 
test  as  the  surest  proof  of  force  or  failure  in  their 
instinct  for  art.  By  such  a  test,  young  Lodge  would 
take  rank  among  the  strongest.  Little  credit  is  due 
to  any  man  for  yielding  to  altogether  extraordin 
ary  beauty  and  charm  in  the  perfection  of  femin- 


WAR  AND  LOVE  87 

ine  ideals,  —  although  few  men  do  it,  —  but  it  is 
far  from  being  a  rule  that  young  men  who  rebel 
against  the  world's  standards,  and  with  infinite 
effort  set  up  a  standard  of  private  war  on  the 
world,  and  maintain  it  with  long  and  exhausting 
endurance,  should  go  directly  into  the  heart  of  the 
society  they  are  denouncing,  and  carry  off  a  wo 
man  whom  lovers  less  sensitive  to  beauty,  and  less 
youthful  in  temperament,  than  poets  or  artists, 
might  be  excused  for  adoring. 

Elizabeth  Davis  —  another  survival  of  rare 
American  stock:  Davis  of  Plymouth,  Frelinghuy- 
sen  of  New  Jersey,  Griswold  of  Connecticut,  with 
the  usual  leash  of  Senators,  Cabinet  officers,  and 
other  such  ornaments,  in  her  ancestry  —  was  in 
truth  altogether  the  highest  flight  of  young  Lodge's 
poetry,  as  he  constantly  told  her  when  her  own 
self-confidence  naturally  hesitated  to  believe  it; 
and  since  his  letters  to  her  strike  a  note  which  rises 
high  above  the  level  of  art  or  education,  they  can 
not  be  wholly  left  out  of  his  life.  The  man  or  wo 
man  who  claims  to  be  a  poet  at  all,  must  prove 
poetry  to  the  heart,  and  neither  Shakespeare  nor 


88  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Shelley  can  be  exempted  from  the  proof,  —  neither 
Dante  nor  Petrarch,  —  whatever  their  society 
might  think  about  it. 

Lodge's  letters  began  in  March,  1899,  when  he 
was  starting  with  his  father  and  mother  on  a  trip 
to  Europe,  which  led  to  Sicily.  From  New  York  he 
wrote  to  bid  good-bye ;  the  engagement  was  not 
yet  avowed.  And  from  Rome,  a  month  later:  — 

TO  MISS  DAVIS 

I  saw  the  grave  of  Keats  the  other  day,  and  also 
of  Shelley.  It  was  a  very  keen  sensation — more 
living,  I  think,  than  anything  I  have  felt  since 
you.  My  life  is  happy  here,  but  my  soul  is  very 
dolorous  and  strenuous.  In  life  nothing  resolves 
itself  well.  If  a  good  issue  is  to  come  to  anything, 
so  much  must  be  struggled  with  and  sacrificed,  so 
much  confusion  and  distress,  before  serenity  comes ! 
When  one  is  very  young,  it  does  n't  seem  fitting. 
One  wants  so  much !  Heaven  and  Earth  is  hardly 
enough  for  the  large  desire  of  youth,  and  the  gates 
of  possible  expansion  close  one  by  one,  until  at  last 
one  runs  through  the  last  one  just  closing,  without 


WAR  AND  LOVE  89 

perhaps  its  being  the  right  one.  The  period  of 
choice  is  very  short;  then  comes  the  short,  sharp 
stab  of  necessity,  and  then  —  one  has  made  one's 
bed,  and  one  must  lie  in  it.  It 's  all  very  eager  and 
restless,  and  perhaps  better  for  being  so. 

From  Rome  in  April  he  wrote:  — 

"One  makes  oneself  so  very  largely,  and  to 
make  oneself  greater  or  better,  one  must  believe. 
Apply  your  religion:  "Thy  faith  has  made  thee 
whole!"  That's  the  most  wonderful  thing  Christ 
ever  said,  and  it  applies  everywhere  in  life.  Be 
lieve  in  yourself!  it  should  be  so  easy  for  you.  I 
do  it,  and  it  is  of  course  far  harder  for  me,  for 
I've  less  to  believe  in. 

The  young  people  had  much  need  to  believe  in 
themselves,  for,  in  a  worldly  point  of  view,  they 
had  not  much  else  to  believe  in.  He  wrote  in  July: 

TO    HIS    MOTHER 

BOSTON,  July,  1899. 

I  am  almost  crazed  with  the  desire  to  be  inde 
pendent,  and  yet  I  won't  do  anything  that  I  don't 


90  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

approve  and  I  won't  give  up  my  writing,  God  will 
ing.  I  must  keep  at  it  and  accomplish  what  I  can  in 
my  own  way.  I  feel  sure  it 's  the  only  way  for  me, 
and  I  know  my  intention  is  not  low,  whatever  my 
performance  may  be.  I  feel  desperate  sometimes 
that  it  all  comes  so  slowly  and  that  I  do  no  better; 
but  I  grit  my  teeth  and  keep  at  it.  The  agony 
of  getting  a  thought  into  adequate  expression  is 
enormous.  However,  I  feel  so  much  resolution 
that  I  take  heart,  and  now,  too,  I  see  my  path 
clearer  ahead  of  me.  I  must  write  and  write,  and 
as  I  say,  I  believe  my  purposes  are  good. 

TUCKANUCK,  September,  1899. 

I  have  n't  written  for  a  long  time,  I  am  afraid, 
but  since  I  have  been  here  —  the  last  ten  days  —  I 
have  been  so  happy  in  the  sun  and  sea  that  I 
have  n't  written  to  any  one  at  all  and  have  hardly 
done  any  work.  I  have  just  lived  very  happily.  I 
have  begun  to  write  a  tragedy  in  verse,  and  it's 
terrible  work  and  not  very  encouraging.  However, 
I  get  along  —  I  have  in  my  head  also  a  plot  for  a 
prose  play,  very  good,  I  think,  and  some  other 


WAR  AND  LOVE  91 

things  besides.  Indeed  my  mind  is  quite  fertile, 
and  physically  I  am  in  splendid  condition.  I  got  a 
letter  from  Mr.  Stedman  this  morning,  who  is 
preparing  an  anthology  of  American  poets  and 
wants  to  put  me  in  it.  J'apporte  un  bagage  assez 
mince,  but  still  if  he  can  find  anything  he  wants 
to  print  he  is  welcome  to  it. 

A  few  days  afterwards, he  wrote  from  Boston:  — 

TO  MISS  DAVIS 

To  get  away,  very  far  from  all  this  greasy  gos 
sip,  this  world  of  little  motives  and  little  desires ! 
We  must  do  it  very  soon.  Only  men  who  live  in  the 
constant  strain  of  feeling  alone  against  the  world 
are  forced  to  concentrate  their  passions  on  an  ob 
ject  that  seems  to  them  above  the  world. 


CHAPTER  V 

MARRIAGE 

NATURALLY,  life  cannot  be  lived  in  heroics.  The 
man  who  places  himself  out  of  line  with  the  cur 
rent  of  society  sees  most  the  ridiculous  or  grotesque 
features  of  his  surroundings,  and  finds  most  in 
them  to  laugh  at.  The  conviction  that  either  he  or 
society  is  insane, —  or  perhaps,  both,  —  becomes 
a  fixed  idea,  with  many  hunorous  sides;  and 
though  the  humor  tends  to  irony  and  somewhat 
cruel  satire,  it  is  often  genial  and  sometimes  play 
ful.  Young  Lodge  laughed  with  the  rest,  at  the 
world  or  himself  by  turns.  When  Bigelow  re 
belled  at  his  anarchic  handwriting,  he  replied:  — 

TO  W.   STURGIS  BIGELOW 

Ballade  d'ung  excellent  poete  au  Sieur  Bigelow  au  sujet  d'ung 
certain  plaint  dudit  Sieur  Bigelow  a  luy  addresse. 

BALLADE 

I 
I  like  to  see  the  phrases  flow 

So  smooth  in  writing  round  and  plain  — 
Pooh!  Hang  the  time  and  trouble!  Though 
^  It  gave  me  fever  on  the  brain 


MARRIAGE  93 

And  caused  intolerable  pain 
In  hand  and  wrist  —  you  set  at  nought 

The  beautiful,  and  still  maintain 
That  writing  must  be  slave  to  thought. 

ii 
I  wrote  for  beauty  and  I  know 

That  beauty  is  its  own  best  gain; 
"Art  for  art's  sake,"  I  cried,  and  so 

My  unintelligible  train 

Of  words  was  writ  —  you  grew  insane 
Trying  to  read  them,  for  you  sought 

A  meaning  and  you  swore  again 
That  writing  must  be  slave  to  thought. 

in 
You  held  the  sheet  above,  below 

Your  head,  and  every  nerve  did  strain 
To  read,  and  from  your  lips  did  go 

Grim  curses  manifold  as  rain. 

You  should  have  known  your  toil  was  vain; 
For  Art's  sole  sake  my  writing  wrought; 

I  scorned  the  axiom  with  disdain 
That  writing  must  be  slave  to  thought. 

IV 

Prince,  speak!  Does  anything  remain 

Now  art  is  gone?  No  sense  you've  caught! 
Then  tell  not  me,  the  pure  inane, 

That  writing  must  be  slave  to  thought. 
Fin  de  la  Ballade  d'ung  excellent  poete  au  Sieur  Bigelow.  Com- 
posee  et  mise  en  escript  ce  neuvieme  Decembre  A.  D.  MDCCCXCIX. 


04  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

From  Washington,  on  April  28,  he  wrote  again 
to  Bigelow:  — 

Well!  the  point  is  here!  one  should  learn  that 
it  is  not  life  that  should  be  taken  seriously,  but  liv 
ing.  In  that  way,  one  gets  pleasure  if  not  happi 
ness.  I  wish  I  was  going  to  Tuckanuck  with  you 
right  off;  but  I'm  not,  and  I  have  yards  and  miles 
of  drudgery  that  maketh  the  heart  sick.  I've  got 
to  write  another  play  before  June.  I  have  written 
several  this  winter,  all  on  a  steadily  decreasing 
scale  of  merit,  and  I  hope  this  one  will  be  bad 
enough  to  be  successful.  The  trees  are  full  of 
leaves,  and  the  air  full  of  sun,  and  only  I  am  vile. 
I  wish  I  could  pretend  it  was  all  somebody  else's 
fault,  but  I  can't.  Voilhl 

A  successful  play  needs  not  only  to  be  fairly  bad 
in  a  literary  sense,  but  bad  in  a  peculiar  way  which 
had  no  relation  with  any  standard  of  .badness  that 
Lodge  could  reach.  He  toiled  in  vain* 

When  one  is  twenty-six  years  old,  splendid  in 
health  and  strength,  and  still  more  splendid  in 


MARRIAGE  95 

love,  one  enjoys  the  exuberant  energy  of  complaint 
with  a  Gargantuan  appetite:  — 

TO   W.   STURGIS   BIGELOW 

WASHINGTON,  May  16,  1900. 

Here  it  has  been  as  high  as  106°  —  Why  don't 
you  go  to  Tuckanuck?  I  would  if  I  could,  Gawd 
knows.  It  is  of  course  self-evident  to  you  as  it  is  to 
me,  that  in  the  event  of  one's  absence  the  world 
will  cease  to  function,  —  but  then  who  the  Devil 
cares  whether  it  functions  or  not?  Not  you,  nor  yet 
I.  I  would  willingly  barter  the  tattered  remnants 
of  a  devilish  tried  soul  to  be  under  one  of  the  great 
waves  on  the  outside  beach  and,  please  Heaven,  I 
soon  shall  be  doing  it.  Meanwhile  I  grovel  along 
in  the  living  heat  which  I  like,  and  do  all  the  work 
that 's  in  me  —  but  after  these  months  of  it,  the 
supply  is  running  a  little  short,  I  'm  afraid.  I  sup 
pose  I  am  here  for  about  three  weeks  more  —  and 
then,  with  your  permission,  kind  Sir!  surf,  Sir!  and 
sun,  Sir!  and  nakedness!  —  Oh,  Lord!  how  I  want 
to  get  my  clothes  off  —  alone  in  natural  solitudes. 
In  this  heavy  springtime  I  grow  to  feel  exquisitely 


96  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

pagan,  and  worship  the  implacable  Aphrodite,  and 
read  Sappho  (with  considerable  difficulty)  in  the 
Greek. 

From  the  beginnings  of  life,  the  poet  and  artist 
have  gone  on,  surprising  themselves  always  afresh 
by  the  discovery  that  their  highest  flights  of  poetry 
and  art  end  in  some  simple  and  primitive  emotion; 
but  the  credit  of  seeing  and  feeling  it  is  the  best 
proof  of  the  poet.  In  his  next  volume  of  Poems, 
published  in  1902,  two  years  afterwards,  he  put 
these  emotions  into  verse,  —  "for  E.  L.,"  —  no 
longer  Elizabeth  Davis  but  Elizabeth  Lodge. 

She  moves  in  the  dusk  of  my  mind,  like  a  bell  with  the  sweet 
ness  of  singing 

In  a  twilight  of  summer  fulfilled  with  the  joy  of  the  sadness  of 
tears; 

And  the  calm  of  her  face,  and  the  splendid,  slow  smile  are  as 
memories  clinging 

Of  songs  and  of  silences  filling  the  distance  of  passionate  years. 

She  moves  in  the  twilight  of  life  like  a  prayer  in  a  heart  that  is 
grieving, 

And  her  youth  is  essential  and  old  as  the  spring  and  the  fresh 
ness  of  spring; 


MARRIAGE  97 

And  her  eyes  watch  the  world  and  the  little  low  ways  of  the 

sons  of  the  living, 
As  the  seraph  might  watch  from  the  golden  grave  height  of  his 

heaven-spread  wing. 

The  variations  on  this  oldest  of  themes  are  end 
less,  and  yet  are  eternally  new  to  some  one  who  dis 
covers  them  afresh;  so  that  very  slight  differences 
of  expression  have  artistic  value.  So,  for  example, 
the  sonnet  beginning :  — 

Why  are  you  gone?  I  grope  to  find  your  hand. 
Why  are  you  gone?  The  large  winds  seaward-bound, 
Tell  of  long  journeying  in  the  endless  void. 
Why  are  you  gone?  I  strain  to  catch  the  sound 
Of  footsteps,  watch  to  see  the  dark  destroyed 
Before  your  lustrous  fingers  that  would  creep 
Over  my  eyes,  and  give  me  strength  to  sleep. 

One  does  not  venture  to  suggest  a  famous  line  of 
a  great  poet  for  the  sake  of  imitating  the  art,  but 
one  does  it  readily  for  the  sake  of  rivalling  the 
feeling.  "You  and  I  have  gone  behind  the  scenes 
and  beyond,  where  all  is  light.  I  say,  grip  my 
hand  always,  for  it  is  always  laid  in  yours.  Get 
from  me  some  of  the  joy  you  give,  —  some  of  the 


98  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

light  and  strength.  I  am  overflowing  with  love, 
which  is  force,  and  you  must  take  from  me  for  my 
sake.  Everywhere  there  is  love,  vast  treasures  of 
love,  that  people  deny  and  conceal,  but  cannot 
kill,  and  in  the  earth  and  sea  also.  I  am  there  for 
you,  and  love  is  there!" 

All  this  is  the  purest  sentiment,  and  yet  young 
Lodge  was  not  sentimental,  and  especially  disliked 
sentimentality  in  literature.  He  would  have  ruth 
lessly  burned  any  verse  that  offered  to  him  the 
suggestion  of  sentimentalism.  His  idyll  was  in 
tense  because  it  was  as  old  and  instinctive  as  na 
ture  itself,  and  as  simple.  If  he  ever  approached 
a  sentimental  expression,  it  was  in  the  relation 
between  parent  and  child,  not  between  lover  and 
mistress.  Love  was  to  him  a  passion,  and  a  very 
real  one,  not  capable  of  dilution  or  disguise.  Such 
passions  generally  have  their  own  way,  and  force 
everything  to  yield.  The  marriage  took  place  in 
Boston,  August  18,  1900.  True  to  his  instinct  of 
shrinking  from  close  and  serious  contact  with  the 
forms  and  conventions  of  a  society  which  was  to  him 
neither  a  close  nor  a  serious  relation,  he  was  mar- 


MARRIAGE  99 

ried  without  previous  notice,  and  without  other 
than  the  necessary  witnesses,  at  the  Church  of  the 
Advent.  The  officiating  clergyman  is  said  to  have 
remarked  that  he  had  never  seen  a  more  beautiful 
wedding;  but  he  was  the  only  person  present  to 
appreciate  its  beauty. 

They  went  off  to  Concord  to  pass  the  honey 
moon,  and  thence  to  Tuckanuck.  All  the  practical 
difficulties  in  their  way  were  ignored,  and  remained 
ignored  through  life,  without  interfering  with  the 
young  couple's  happiness.  The  world  is  still  kind 
to  those  who  are  young,  and  handsome,  and  in 
love,  and  who  trample  on  respectability.  Natu 
rally,  as  soon  as  the  winter  came,  they  set  off  for 
Paris. 

TO    HIS    MOTHER 

PARIS,  January,  1901. 

We  have  found  a  most  charming  little  apart 
ment,  furnished  —  with  only  the  indispensable, 
thank  Heaven!  The  superfluous  in  a  furnished 
apartment  of  modest  price  is  horrible  —  and  for 
only  two  hundred  francs  a  month.  We  took  it.  It 
is  46  Rue  du  Bac.  The  house  is  an  old  palace  of  the 


100  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

days  when  the  Ruedu  Bac  was  a  fashionable  street. 
It  is  built  on  three  sides  of  an  enormous  court  as 
wide  as  Massachusetts  Avenue  without  the  side 
walks.  At  the  back  of  the  court  are  large  green 
houses  of  a  florist  —  very  pretty.  Our  apartment 
is  on  the  court,  on  a  southwest  corner,  filled  with 
sun  and  very  nice  for  us.  It  is  at  the  top  of  the 
house.  The  stair-case  is  really  splendid,  —  very 
large,  with  three  great  windows  on  every  landing 
and  fine  wrought-iron  railing,  the  first  flight  in 
stone,  the  other  two  in  bricks.  The  apartment  it 
self  is  the  funniest  nicest  place  you  ever  saw,  a  sort 
of  Vie  de  Boh£me  poetry  about  it,  and  sun  and  air 
to  waste.  The  walls  are  very  thick,  so  that  the 
place  is  full  of  closets  and  the  windows  are  all  in 
deep  recesses.  Some  of  the  floors  are  stone,  others 
hardwood.  We  are  delighted  with  it.  The  Rue  du 
Bac  runs  up  from  the  Pont  Royal,  if  you  remem 
ber,  and  46  is  near  the  river,  and  in  fact  within 
striking  distance  of  everywhere.  Well,  we  got  the 
apartment,  and  you  may  imagine  we  have  been 
busy,  and  Mrs.  Cameron  has  been  kindness  itself, 
lending  us  things  to  cover  the  walls,  etc.  We  are 


MARRIAGE  101 

having  a  bully  time  getting  installed  and  altogether 
I  never  had  such  fun  in  my  life. 

And  there's  for  the  practical  side  of  things.  I 
have  n't  got  round  to  the  absorbing  psychological 
problems  surrounding  me,  nor  to  the  theatres 
we've  seen,  nor  the  work  I've  done, — a  good  deal, 
—  nor  the  thoughts  we've  thought. 

TO   HIS  FATHER 

PARIS,  1901. 

We  live  quite  alone  and  see  hardly  any  one.  I 
am  hard  at  work  on  one  or  two  things.  The  law 
against  religious  associations  has  at  last  passed 
and  all  socialists  are  happy.  The  next  move  is  to 
confiscate  Rothschild,  then  the  manufacturers, 
then  the  other  bourgeois,  and  so  on  to  socialism. 
There  are  one  or  two  new  things  here  which  would 
interest  you,  I  think  —  such  as  casts  of  some  of 
the  things  found  at  Delphi,  the  new  bridge  over 
the  Seine,  Pont  Alexandre  III,  which  is  really  very 
good,  and  some  other  things  too. 

PARIS,  1901. 

I  have  sent  the  Louis  to  Bourgouin,  and  I  will  at 
once  attend  to  the  books.  The  socialists  here  have 


102        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

started  a  "librairie  socialiste."  How  it  differs  from 
an  ordinary  book-shop  neither  they  nor  I  know; 
but  as  I  live  more  or  less  among  socialists,  I  find 
myself  obliged  to  get  my  books  there  and  yours  will 
be  sent  from  there.  Curiously  enough  it  is  an  ex 
cellent  shop.  I  was  very  glad  to  hear  that  you 
expect  to  get  through  without  an  extra  session.  I 
had  been  afraid  that  Cuba  and  the  Philippines 
might  delay  you  and  produce  discord.  You  know, 
however,  how  difficult  it  is  to  know  what  is  hap 
pening  de  par  le  monde  in  this  most  provincial  capi 
tal.  The  New  York  "Herald"  had  become  merely 
a  vulgar  sort  of  "Town  Topics,"  published  every 
day,  and  has,  I  really  think,  less  news  than  the 
best  French  papers.  In  which  connection  I  should 
like  extremely  to  know  the  truth  about  the  row 
Sampson  has  got  himself  into.  I  saw  that  Allen 
attacked  him  in  his  usual  polished  way  in  the 
Senate,  which,  coupled  with  the  fact  that  I  greatly 
admire  Sampson,  warmed  my  heart  for  him.  But  it 
seems  impossible  to  find  out  what  it  was  all  about. 
Here  the  whole  of  France  is  shaken  over  the 
pending  bill  confiscating  the  property  of  the  reli- 


MARRIAGE  103 

gious  orders.  It  is  going  to  pass  and  the  Church 
is  pretty  sick.  The  debate  has  produced  one  inter 
esting  piece  of  statistics:  that  there  are  three  times 
as  many  monks  in  France  now  as  there  were  in 
1789,  whereas  the  population  has  not  quite 
doubled.  My  friend,  Hubert,  says,  "C'est  curieux, 
c.a  demontre  que  nous  retournions  a  la  barbarie." 

B saw  some  American  colonist  lady  the  other 

day,  who  told  her  that  Porter  was  a  very  bad 

ambassador.   B .   Why?  —  American   colonist 

lady.    Because  he  is  pro-Boer.  —  B .    But  I 

thought  that  was  popular  in  France.  —  American 
colonist  lady.  Oh,  no,  all  the  Americans  here  are 
pro-English.  —  This  strikes  me  as  a  very  charac 
teristic  expression  of  the  American  colonist  point 
of  view. 

We  see  very  few  people  and  no  society,  and  less 
than  no  American  colony,  and  we  are  very  happy 
indeed.  We  are  looking  forward  very  much  to 
your  advent  on  the  scene.  There  are  some  new 
plays  and  things  which  may  amuse  you.  Also  they 
have  at  last  arranged  the  great  series  of  Rubenses  in 
the  Louvre,  as  decorations,  which  is  what  they  are 


104  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

meant  to  be.  I  am  writing  a  good  deal  and  study 
ing  the  rest  of  the  time.  Please  give  my  love  to 
Theodore  when  he  takes  the  veil.  I  hope  it  will  be 
a  fine  day  for  him. 

PARIS,  1901. 

I  am  so  glad  you  got  through  the  session  so  well, 
and  I  hope  you  are  not  worn  out.  I  was  very  much 
interested  to  see  that  England  had  refused  our 
treaty,  and  I  wonder  what  is  coming  next.  Is  the 
sentiment  strong  to  abrogate  the  Clayton-Bulwer 
treaty  by  resolution?  I  hope  so.  This  refusal  really 
makes  one  believe  that  those  whom  the  Gods  wish 
to  destroy  they  first  make  mad. 

PARIS,  Spring  fr  1901.    ' 

Many,  many  thanks  for  your  kind  letter,  and 
for  all  the  trouble  you  have  taken  about  my  novel 
and  my  play.  I  am  very  glad  indeed  to  have  R.  S.'s 
criticism,  and  I  think  that  dramatically  you  and  he 
are  pretty  nearly  right.  Indeed  I  think  the  action 
in  "Villon"  is  really  too  subjective  for  the  stage. 
It  is  far  more  the  presentation  of  an  idea  than  of 
an  action,  and  I  doubt  very  much  if  it  can  be  fitted 


MARRIAGE  105 

for  acting.  I  should  be  very  glad,  however,  if  you 
would  bring  it  over  when  you  come.  I  have  so 
much  on  my  hands  now  that  I  could  not  attend  to 
it  before  then. 

The  other  night  I  went  to  hear  Jaures,  the  So 
cialist,  speak.  He  is,  I  think,  a  very  remarkable 
orator  and  a  very  sincere  man. 

The  salon  is  open  here  and  I  have  been  through 
it  once.  There  are  seven  kilometers  of  canvas,  I 
think,  and  it's  altogether  a  pretty  poor  showing,  so 
it  seems  to  me.  There  are,  however,  one  or  two 
good  things,  especially  in  the  sculpture,  and  many 
clever  things. 

I  hope  you  will  succeed  in  getting  the  Bayreuth 
tickets.  We  are  all  very  much  looking  forward  to 
going. 

TO  HIS  MOTHER 

PARIS,  Spring,  1901. 

Day  before  yesterday  Hubert  took  us  to  St.  Ger 
main,  where  he  is  "  attache"  au  Musee."  It  was  very 
interesting  and  we  had  a  drive  in  the  forest  — 
superb.  Hubert  is  the  nicest  little  man  in  the 


106        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE) 

world  —  sympathetic,  gentle,  bright,  and  with  a 
preposterous  amount  of  learning.  He  insists  he  is 
going  to  make  me  collaborate  in  some  scientific 
magazine  on  an  Egyptian  topic.  I  hope  not.  How 
ever,  I  am  tolerably  strong  in  Egyptian  now.  I  can 
read  the  texts  with  considerable  fluency  and  the 
inscriptions  on  tombs,  etc.,  become  very  intelligi 
ble.  It  is  certainly  a  useless  accomplishment,  but 
excessively  interesting.  At  the  same  time  I  have 
been  reading  up  Chaldea  and  Syria,  Babylonia, 
etc.,  so  that  I  have  a  pretty  good  idea  of  the  classic 
Orient.  It's  a  point  of  departure  I  have  always 
lacked  and  needed.  Meanwhile,  I  have  written 
considerably.  I  enclose  a  couple  of  things  you  may 
like  to  see.  I  am  very  glad  the  "Atlantic"  and 
"Century"  received  me  so  well.  I  have  just  re 
ceived  Papa's  letter  with  the  letter  from  Gilder, 
and  shall  answer  it  at  once.  Gissing  has  gone 
away,  I  am  sorry  to  say.  I  should  have  been  glad 
to  see  more  of  him.  He  is  a  real  man. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  European  part  of  the  idyll  ended  with  a 
week  at  Baireuth  and  the  return  home  in  August, 
1901.  Thenceforward,  the  life  at  Washington  in 
winter,  and  at  Nahant  or  Tuckanuck  in  summer, 
—  the  life  of  husband  and  father,  —  becomes  only 
the  background  for  literary  work,  and  the  work 
alone  remains  to  tell  of  the  life.  The  poet's  educa 
tion  was  finished;  what  the  poet  could  do  with  it 
remains  to  be  shown. 

The  first  result  appeared  in  the  volume  already 
mentioned,  entitled  "Poems  (1899-1902),"  which 
appeared  in  the  winter  of  1902-03.  The  next  was 
"Cain,"  published  in  November,  1904.  The  first 
volume,  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  pages,  consisted 
of  the  short  efforts  of  the  poet's  youth.  The  sec 
ond  volume  is  a  single,  sustained  effort  of  drama, 
and  claimed  attention  less  for  its  poetic  than  for  its 
dramatic  qualities. 

Like  all  the  poets  of  the  same  school,  Lodge  con- 


108        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

ceded  nothing  to  mere  decoration  or  ornament. 
The  vigorous  standards  of  this  severe  Academy  re 
garded  a  popular  or  conventional  flower  as  a  blot. 
Every  verse  must  have  its  stress,  or  strain,  and 
every  thought  its  intensity.  This  preliminary  con 
dition  is  something  not  to  be  discussed,  but  to  be 
accepted  or  rejected  in  advance,  like  the  conditions 
of  a  color-scheme,  or  an  architectural  or  musical 
composition;  and,  since  few  readers  are  trained  to 
such  technical  appreciation,  at  a  moment  when  the 
public  refuses  to  make  any  mental  effort  that  it 
can  avoid,  the  poet's  audience  is  very  small.  In 
reality  the  mental  effort  of  reading  is  much  less 
than  that  of  listening  to  Wagner  or  Debussy;  but 
the  poet  numbers  his  audience  by  scores,  while  the 
musician,  if  he  gets  any  audience  at  all,  numbers 
it  by  thousands.  These  restraints  are  a  part  of  the 
given  situation  under  which  the  dramatic  poet 
works;  conditions  which  he  cannot  change;  they 
are  in  reality  far  more  severe  and  paralyzing  than 
the  conditions  imposed  by  the  old  unities.  They 
must  be  kept  in  mind  by  the  reader,  unless  his 
reading  is  to  be  waste  of  time. 


CAIN  109 

So,  too,  the  dramatic  idea  is  a  condition  given 
beforehand,  to  be  accepted  or  refused  as  a  whole. 
The  poet  does  not  want  an  audience  that  looks  for 
gems,  —  that  selects  a  pretty  song  or  verse,  and 
rejects  the  whole,  —  the  unity.  He  has  some  one 
great  tragic  motive,  which  he  tries  to  work  out  in  a 
way  he  thinks  his  own,  and  he  wants  to  be  judged 
by  his  dramatic  effect,  as  an  actor  is  judged  by  his 
power  of  holding  an  audience.  Properly  he  would 
ask,  not  whether  his  drama  is  liked,  but  whether  it 
is  dramatic;  not  whether  the  reader  was  pleased, 
but  whether  he  was  bored. 

Lodge's  dramatic  motive  was  always  the  same, 
whether  in  "Cain,"  or  in  "Herakles,"  or  in  the 
minor  poems.  It  was  that  of  Schopenhauer,  of 
Buddhism,  of  Oriental  thought  everywhere,  —  the 
idea  of  Will,  making  the  universe,  but  existing 
only  as  subject.  The  Will  is  God;  it  is  nature;  it  is 
all  that  is;  but  it  is  knowable  only  as  ourself.  Thus 
the  sole  tragic  action  of  humanity  is  the  Ego,  — 
the  Me, — always  maddened  by  the  necessity  of 
self-sacrifice,  the  superhuman  effort  of  lifting  him 
self  and  the  universe  by  sacrifice,  and,  of  course,  by 


110        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

destroying  the  attachments  which  are  most  vital, 
in  order  to  attain.  The  idea  is  a  part  of  the  most 
primitive  stock  of  religious  and  philosophical 
motives,  worked  out  in  many  forms,  as  Prometheus, 
as  Herakles,  as  Christ,  as  Buddha,  —  to  mention 
only  the  most  familiar,  —  but,  in  our  modern  con 
ception  of  life,  impossible  to  realize  except  as  a 
form  of  insanity.  All  Saviors  were  anarchists,  but 
Christian  anarchists,  tortured  by  the  self-contra 
dictions  of  their  role.  All  were  insane,  because 
their  problem  was  self -contradictory,  and  because, 
in  order  to  raise  the  universe  in  oneself  to  its  high 
est  power,  its  negative  powers  must  be  paralyzed 
or  destroyed.  In  reality,  nothing  was  destroyed; 
only  the  Will  —  or  what  we  now  call  Energy  — 
was  freed  and  perfected. 

This  idea,  which  probably  seemed  simpler  than 
shower  or  sunshine  to  a  Hindoo  baby  two  thousand 
years  ago,  has  never  taken  root  in  the  western  mind 
except  as  a  form  of  mysticism,  and  need  not  be 
labored  further.  It  was  what  the  French  call  the 
donnee  of  Lodge's  drama,  —  the  condition  to  be 
granted  from  the  start;  and  it  had,  for  a  dramatist, 


CAIN  111 

the  supreme  merit  of  being  the  most  universal 
tragic  motive  in  the  whole  possible  range  of 
thought.  Again  and  again,  from  varied  points  of 
view,  Lodge  treated  it  in  varied  moods  and  tem 
pers;  but  his  two  dramas,  "Cain"  and  "Hera- 
kles,"  were  elaborately  developed  expansions  of 
the  theme. 

The  general  reader,  who  reads  a  Greek  drama  in 
the  same  spirit  in  which  he  reads  the  morning 
newspaper,  can  scarcely  get  beyond  the  first  half- 
dozen  pages  of  such  a  theme;  and,  in  fact,  the  sub 
ject  was  never  intended  for  him.  The  more  serious 
student,  who  reads  further,  can  seldom  escape  a 
sense  of  discomfort  from  the  excessive  insistence 
on  the  motive, — the  violence  with  which  it  is  — 
over  and  over  again  —  thrust  before  his  eyes  in 
its  crudest  form;  and,  in  fact,  Lodge  has  what  the 
French  call  the  faults  of  his  qualities;  he  is  exuber 
ant,  and  exuberance  passes  the  bounds  of  mesure. 
Nature  herself  is  apt  to  exaggerate  in  the  same  way. 
We  must  take  it  —  or  reject  it  —  as  we  take  a 
thunderstorm  or  a  flood;  it  may  be  unnecessary, 
but  is  it  dramatic? 


112  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Every  just  critic  will  leave  the  reader  to  answer 
this  question  for  himself.  Taste  is  a  matter  about 
which  the  Gods  themselves  are  at  odds.  American 
taste  is  shocked  by  every  form  of  paradox  except 
its  own.  Greek  taste  was  lavish  of  paradox,  espe 
cially  about  the  Gods.  Saturn  ate  his  children,  and 
Zeus  dethroned  his  father.  Questions  of  taste! 
while  Lodge's  paradox,  as  developed  in  Cain,  was 
a  question  rather  of  logic,  —  even  almost  of  mathe 
matics.  Step  by  step,  like  a  demonstration  in  ge 
ometry,  the  primitive  man  is  forced  into  the  atti 
tude  of  submission  to  destiny  or  assertion  of  self, 
and  Lodge  develops  each  step  as  a  necessary  se 
quence,  in  the  nature  of  the  Greek  fate,  but  a  re 
sult  of  conscious  Will.  The  paradox  that  Cain 
killed  Abel  because,  from  the  beginning,  man  had 
no  choice  but  to  make  himself  slave  of  nature  or 
its  master,  is,  after  all,  nothing  like  so  paradoxical 
as  the  philanthropist  idea  that  man  has  gone  on 
killing  himself  since  the  world  began,  without  any 
reason  at  all. 

This,  then,  is  the  paradox  of  Cain  which  Lodge 
undertook  to  work  out,  as  Byron  had  worked  it  out 


CAIN  113 

before  him,  in  one  of  his  strongest  dramas;  and  the 
readers  who  take  it  in  this  sense  can  hardly  fail  to 
find  it  dramatic.  They  may  not  like  the  drama, 
but  they  will  probably  not  toss  it  aside.  They  will 
admit  its  force.  They  may  even,  if  particularly  sen 
sitive  to  this  oldest  of  emotional  motives,  follow 
the  poet  himself  to  the  end. 

Captain,  my  Soul,  despair  is  not  for  thee! 
Thou  shall  behold  the  seals  of  darkness  lift, 
Weather  the  wrathful  tempest  and  at  last, 
Resolute,  onward,  headlong,  dazed  and  scarred, 
Reel  through  the  gates  of  Truth's  enormous  dawn! 

To  develop  this  idea  in  its  dramatic  form,  Lodge 
took  as  his  text  the  words  of  Genesis,  and  allowed 
himself  only  the  four  characters,  Adam,  Eve,  Cain 
and  Abel.  He  gave  himself  no  favors;  he  intro 
duced  no  light  tones ;  on  his  sombre  background  the 
figures  move  in  no  more  light  than  is  strictly  neces 
sary  to  see  them  move  at  all;  they  follow  the  rules 
of  the  mediaeval  Mystery  Play,  rather  than  those 
of  the  Greek  drama.  Yet  any  sympathetic  work 
man  of  literary  effect  will  probably  admit  that  they 
do  move,  and  even  that  at  certain  moments  their 


114  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

movement  is  highly  dramatic;  so  much  so  as  to  be 
genuinely  emotional. 

So  also  with  the  characters  themselves!  If  there 
is  a  character  hard  to  deal  with  in  the  whole  range 
of  dramatic  effort,  Adam  is  he!  No  artist  has  suc 
ceeded  in  making  Adam  sympathetic,  and  very 
few  indeed  have  tried  to  do  so.  "The  woman 
tempted  me  and  I  did  eat "  has  been  his  sentence 
of  condemnation  as  a  figure  of  drama,  since  drama 
was  acted.  Such  a  figure  could  not  be  heroic,  and 
only  with  difficulty  could  be  saved  from  being 
ridiculous  on  the  stage.  Even  the  twelfth-cen 
tury  "Mystery  of  Adam's  Fall"  dwelt  only  on 
his  weakness  and  abject  submission  to  Eve  on 
one  side,  and  to  God  on  the  other.  Lodge  ac 
cepted  the  traditional  figure,  and  made  the  best 
of  it. 

Though  my  life  is  bruised  with  sore  affliction 
And  dire  repentance  blast  my  happiness; 
Though  in  remembrance  Paradise  forever 
Blooms  with  fresh  light  and  flowers  ineffable. 
Clear  pieties  and  peaceful  innocence, 
Against  the  gloom  of  this  grieved  sentience 
Of  violence  and  starvation,  yet  I  bear, 


CAIN  115 

Scornful  of  tears,  the  grief  and  scorn  of  life! 
Faith  is  the  stern,  austere  acknowledgment 
And  dumb  obedience  to  the  will  of  God: 
Such  faith  my  soul  has  kept  inviolable! 
What  though  he  crush  me,  is  not  He  the  Lord! 

The  drama  permitted  little  development  of 
Adam's  character:  he  scarcely  appears  after  the 
first  act,  leaving  the  stage  to  the  two  brothers  to 
work  out  their  inevitable  antagonism,  and  their 
contradictory  conceptions  of  duty.  Although 
Cain's  character  necessarily  had  to  be  developed 
to  the  point  of  insanity,  it  was  a  logical  insanity; 
while  Abel's  character  remained  also  true  to  its 
logical  conditions  of  submission  to  a  force  or  will 
not  its  own.  The  two  brothers  represented  two 
churches,  and  the  strife  ended  as  such  strife  in  his 
tory  has  commonly  ended,  —  in  the  destruction  of 
one  or  the  other,  the  victory  of  faith  or  free-will. 

The  character  which  Lodge  developed  with  evi 
dent  sympathy  was  not  masculine  but  feminine. 
Cain  might  be  himself,  but  Eve  was  the  mother,  a 
nature  far  more  to  his  liking.  Upon  her  was  thrown 
the  whole  burden  and  stress  of  the  men's  weakness 


116        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

or  insanity.  The  drama  opens  upon  her,  bearing 
the  alternate  reproaches  and  entreaties  of  Adam, 
and  trying  to  infuse  into  him  a  share  of  her  own 
courage  and  endurance;  Adam  implores  her:  — 

"  Hold  me  —  I  need  thy  tenderness,  I  need 
Thy  calm  and  pitiful  hands  to  comfort  me." 

Eve  answers :  — 

"Be  still  a  little;  all  will  be  well,  I  know." 

A  total  inversion  of  r61es!  and  it  is  carried 
through  consistently  to  the  end.  All  the  men  ap 
peal  to  Eve,  and  then  refuse  to  listen  to  her.  In 
the  vehement  dispute  at  the  end  of  the  first  act, 
Adam  at  last  turns  to  Eve,  and  bids  her  to  lecture 
her  son:  — 

And  thou,  Eve,  Woman,  most  perilously  wandered 
In  weak  delusion,  now  I  charge  thee  speak  — 
Lest  thou  should  fall  again  in  deathless  sin,  — 
Of  God  and  man,  —  God's  all,  man's  nothingness! 

EVE 
Dear  son,  we  are  God's  creatures  every  one  — 

CAIN 
Mother! 

EVE 

I'll  speak  no  more!  — 


CAIN  117 

Except  perhaps  the  somewhat  undeveloped  fig 
ure  of  Abel,  all  these  characters  are  personally 
felt,  —  to  the  dramatist  they  were  real  and  living 
figures,  —  but  that  of  Eve  is  the  most  personal  of 
all.  As  the  drama  opens  on  the  wife  bearing  the 
reproaches  and  supporting  the  weakness  of  the 
husband,  so  it  ends  by  the  mother  assuming  the 
insanities  of  the  son.  After  the  traditional  devel 
opment  of  the  mediaeval  drama,  Eve  is  reproduced 
in  the  Virgin.  Lodge  adhered  closely  to  the  medi 
aeval  scheme  except  in  transposing  the  roles  of  the 
brothers,  and  intensifying  the  role  of  the  mother. 
As,  in  the  mediaeval  conception,  the  role  of  the  Vir 
gin  almost  effaced  the  role  of  Christ,  the  drama  of 
Cain  ends  by  almost  effacing  Cain  in  the  loftier 
self-sacrifice  of  the. woman:  — 

"Go  forth,  go  forth,  lonely  and  godlike  man! 
My  heart  will  follow  tho*  my  feet  must  stay. 
Yet  in  thy  solitude  shall  there  be  a  woman 
To  care  for  thee  through  the  incessant  days, 
To  lie  beside  thee  in  the  desolate  nights, 
To  love  thee  as  thy  soul  shall  love  the  truth! 
In  her  thy  generation  shall  conceive 
Passionate  daughters,  strong  and  fierce-eyed  sons. 


118        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

To  lift  the  light  and  bear  the  labor  of  truth 
Whereof  the  spark  is  mine,  the  fire  is  thine." 

Perhaps  some  readers  would  find  more  meaning 
and  higher  taste  in  the  drama  had  Lodge  called  it 
"Eve"  instead  of  calling  it  "Cain";  but  here  the 
dramatist  was  developing  his  theme  in  philosophy 
rather  than  in  poetry,  and  the  two  motives  almost 
invariably  stand  in  each  other's  light.  The  ma 
ternal  theme  is  the  more  poetic  and  dramatic,  but 
without  the  philosophy  the  poem  and  the  drama 
have  no  reason  to  exist.  The  reader  must  take  it  as 
it  is  given,  or  must  throw  it  aside  altogether,  and 
compose  a  drama  of  his  own,  with  a  totally  differ 
ent  donnee.  In  either  case,  he  will  search  long,  and 
probably  in  vain,  through  American  literature,  for 
another  dramatic  effort  as  vigorous  and  sustained 
as  that  of  "Cain,"  and,  if  he  finds  what  he  seeks, 
it  is  somewhat  more  than  likely  that  he  will  end  by 
finding  it  in  "Herakles." 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    GREAT   ADVENTURE 

COMPOSITION,  and  especially  dramatic  composi 
tion,  is  an  absorbing  task.  Night  passes  rapidly  in 
shaping  a  single  phrase,  and  dawn  brings  a  harsh 
light  to  witness  putting  it  in  the  fire.  Lodge 
worked  habitually  by  night,  and  destroyed  as 
freely  as  he  composed.  Meanwhile  life  went  on, 
with  such  pleasures  and  pains  as  American  life 
offers;  but,  in  narrative,  the  pains  take  the  larger 
place,  and  the  pleasures  are  to  be  understood  as  a 
background.  The  most  serious  loss  to  Lodge's  life 
was  the  illness  and  death  of  his  friend,  Trumbull 
Stickney,  whose  companionship  had  been  his  best 
support  since  the  early  days  of  Paris  and  the  Latin 
Quarter.  Stickney  owned  a  nature  of  singular 
refinement,  and  his  literary  work  promised  to  take 
rank  at  the  head  of  the  work  done  by  his  genera 
tion  of  Americans;  but  he  had  hardly  come  home 
to  begin  it  at  Harvard  College  when  he  was  struck 


120  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

down  by  fatal  disease.  Lodge's  letters  had  much 
to  say  of  the  tragedy,  and  of  the  volume  of  verses 
which  he  helped  to  publish  afterwards  in  order  to 
save  what  relics  remained  of  Stickney's  poetry. 

From  Boston  in  August,  1904,  he  wrote  his  wife: 
"Just  after  I  wrote  to  you,  John  called  me  up  on 
the  telephone  and  told  me  that  Joe  [Stickney]  was 
very  seriously  ill  at  the  Victoria.  I  went  down 
there  at  once  and  saw  Lisel,  the  doctor,  and  Lucy, 
and  I  write  to  you  now,  in  the  greatest  agony  of 
mind.  Joe  has  got  a  tumor  on  the  brain.  For  ten 
days  he  has  had  almost  constant  terrific  pains  in 
his  head.  They  brought  him  to  Boston  last  Thurs 
day.  You  can  imagine  how  dreadful  a  shock  it 
was  to  get  this  frightful  news  when  I  had  hoped  to 
take  Joe  to  Tuckanuck  with  us.  I  am  completely 
unnerved.  .  .  .  The  doctor  told  me  I  should  cer 
tainly  not  be  able  to  see  him — no  one  can.  .  .  . 
I  feel  at  present  utterly  prostrated.  Somehow  I 
have  never  conceived  of  Joe 's  dying." 

From  Tuckanuck,  September  1:  "You  can 
imagine  better  than  I  can  tell  you,  with  what  a 
tense  and  anxious  hope  I  cling  to  the  possibility 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  121 

that  Joe  will  be  saved,  and  returned  to  life  a  well 
man.  I  feel  almost  heart-broken  when  I  think  of 
him,  and  my  mind  goes  back  through  all  the  im 
mense  days  and  ways  of  life  that  we  have  seen  to 
gether.  .  .  .  Doc  [Sturgis  Bigelow]  is,  as  you  may 
guess,  the  best  and  dearest  companion  in  this 
twilight  of  grief  and  anxiety  in  which  I  have  my 
present  being,  and  this  place  is  of  course  more 
soothing  than  anywhere  else  to  me.  .  .  ." 

From  Nahant,  November,  1904:  "Don't  get 
carried  away  with  the  idea  that  Joe's  death  has  set 
the  term  to  youth  or  is  really  the  end  of  anything. 
Life  —  our  life,  his  life,  the  life  of  the  human  soul 
—  is  quite  continuous,  I'm  convinced:  one  thing 
with  another,  big  and  little,  sad  and  gay,  real  and 
false,  and  the  whole  business  just  life,  which  is  its 
own  punishment  and  reward,  its  own  beginning 
and  end.  .  .  ." 

From  Nahant,  November,  1904:  "I've  finished 
re-reading  the  'Republic,'  and  it  is  one  of  the  few 
books  in  which  my  sons  shall  be  thoroughly  edu 
cated  if  I  can  manage  it.  There  are  not  more  than 
a  very  few  books  from  which  every  man  can  catch 


122  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

a  glimpse  of  the  Great  Idea,  for  there  are  only  a 
very  few  great  torch-bearers.  But  the  'Repub 
lic'  is  one,  and  much  more  accessible  than  any 
other,  except  the  *  Leaves  of  Grass';  for  Christ  is 
deeply  hidden  in  the  rubbish  of  the  Church,  and 
Buddha  and  Liao  Tze  are  very  far  removed  from 
the  processes  of  our  minds." 

From  Boston,  January,  1905:  "I  Ve  had  the 
most  warm  and  vivid  delight  in  Dok's  [Sturgis 
Bigelow's]  company,  which  has  been  constantly 
with  me  since  I  came  here.  He  has  surpassed  him 
self  in  kindness  and  clear,  warm,  wise  sympathy 
and  comprehensiveness.  To-night  I  have  passed  a 
long  and  superb  evening  with  him,  in  which  we 
have  together,  in  a  manner  of  speaking,  fait  le  tour 
on  the  parapets  of  thought.  It  has  renewed  and 
inspired  me,  given  me,  as  it  were,  a  new  departure 
and  a  new  vista.  ...  I  hate  to  leave  to-morrow, 
for  he  seems  so  glad  to  have  me,  and  I,  the  Gods 
know,  get  everything  from  being  with  him.  He 
does,  as  you  might  say,  continually  see  me  through, 
—  through  confusion,  and  through  mistakes  and 
desperations,  —  in  fact,  through  life.  It 's  im- 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  123 

mense,  what  he  has  done  and  does  for  me.  In  short, 
after  two  days  of  him  I  feel  all  straightened  out, 
and  you,  you  best  know  how  badly  I  needed  this 
beneficent  process.  Last  night  we  saw  Rejane  in 
*L'Hirondelle,'  a  play  not  at  all  superior,  not  of 
any  brilliancy  of  merit  or  originality  of  human 
criticism,  but  so,  after  all,  interesting  by  virtue  of  a 
certain  apparent  and  immense  genuine  reality,  — 
so  *  written,'  with  such  glitter  of  words  and  phrase 
and  epigram,  and  so  acted,  above  all,  that  we  both 
passed  an  evening  of  immense,  contented,  uncriti 
cal  delight." 

From  Mrs.  Wharton's,  New  York,  January, 
1905 :  "  I  left  Boston  rather  sadly,  for  my  days  there 
had  been  marvellous.  A  real  readjustment  and  re- 
coherence  of  all  the  immense  pressure  of  great  ex 
perience  which  has,  as  you  know,  kept  me  strug 
gling  and  a  little  breathless  since  Joe's  death.  With 
Dok  I  really  found  my  footing,  brushed  the  night 
from  my  eyes,  and  took  a  long  glance  forward.  .  .  . 
Mrs.  Wharton  was  really  glad  to  see  me,  and  I  to 
see  her,  and  we  have  had  a  good  deal  of  the  swift, 
lucid,  elliptical  conversation  which  is  so  perfect 


124  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

and  so  stimulating  and  so  neatly  defined  in  its 
range.  ...  It  is  a  great  delight  to  be  with  her,  as 
I  am  a  good  deal,  and  to  be  clear  and  orderly  and 
correct  in  one's  thought  and  speech,  as  far  as  one 
goes.  It's  good  for  one,  and  vastly  agreeable  be 
sides,  —  indeed,  it  is  to  me  a  kind  of  gymnastic 
excitement,  very  stimulating." 

As  these  letters  show,  the  death  of  Stickney 
threw  Lodge  rather  violently  back  on  himself  and 
his  personal  surroundings,  and  he  stretched  out  his 
hands  painfully  for  intellectual  allies.  A  stroke  of 
rare  good  fortune  threw  a  new  friend  in  his  way, 
to  fill  the  void  in  his  life  that  Stickney  had  left. 
Langdon  Mitchell,  another  poet  and  dramatist, 
with  much  the  same  ideals  and  difficulties,  but 
with  ten  years*  more  experience,  brought  him 
help  and  counsel  of  infinite  value,  as  his  letters 
show:  — 

TO    LANGDON    MITCHELL 

NAHANT  (July,  1903). 

DEAR  MITCHELL,  —  Before  receiving  your  letter 
and  in  an  ecstasy  of  good  manners,  I  wrote  to  your 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  125 

wife  to  ask  her  if  I  might  come  to  you  on  the  17th. 
I  can't  very  well  come  earlier  for  I  am  by  way  of 
seeing  my  parents  off  to  Europe,  where  my  Dad  is 
going  to  assist  in  despoiling  the  virtuous  Briton, 
for  whom  the  wrathful  tears  of  the  State  Depart 
ment  abundantly  flow,  of  what  neither  is  nor  ought 
to  be  his  except  on  the  theory  that  everything  of 
value  should  belong  to  that  people  who,  when 
pressed,  will  blushingly  confess  that  they  are  the 
chosen  of  God.  My  father  starts,  then,  on  this 
engaging  mission l  on  the  17th,  and  after  having 
given  him  my  blessing  and  those  counsels  gained 
only  by  inexperience,  without  which  no  child  with 
any  sense  of  responsibility  should  take  leave  of  his 
father,  having  in  fact  done  all  my  duty,  I  shall  at 
once  turn  myself  to  pleasure  and  embark  with  a 
mind  wholly  vague  as  to  direction,  you-ward.  It's 
mighty  good  of  you,  dear  Mitchell,  and  of  your 
wife  too  to  want  me  for  a  few  days,  and  I  can't  tell 
you  with  how  great  pleasure  I  look  forward  to  see 
ing  you.  We  '11  have  some  great  days. 

1  The  Alaskan  Boundary  Tribunal,  which  met  in  London  in 
the  summer  of  1903  and  of  which  his  father  was  a  member. 


126  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

1925  F  ST.,  October,  1903. 

DEAR  MITCHELL,  —  Good !  You  understand 
Beaudelaire  as  I  do;  indeed  you  say  things  about 
him  which  make  me  realize  as  never  before  my  own 
comprehension  of  him.  I  am  doubtful  about 
French  poetry  being,  like  Latin,  "City  poetry." 
Think  of  Ronsard  and  his  crowd,  or  Victor  Hugo 
or  Leconte  de  Lisle  —  but  Beaudelaire,  like  Villon, 
like  Verlaine,  is  certainly  a  city  poet.  And  why  not? 
The  civilization  of  an  old  society  is,  I  am  certain, 
the  fair  material  of  poems.  The  best  is  that  Beau 
delaire  has  given  you  pleasure,  and  I  feel  that  you 
have  appreciated  as  I  do  that  he  is,  in  his  best  mo 
ments,  really  a  great  poet,  one  of  the  torch-bearers. 
"Allons!  after  the  great  companions  and  to  belong 
to  them!"  Ah!  let  us  go  and  be  of  them  if  we  can, 
dear  Mitchell.  At  least  we  can  follow  on  the  "  great 
road  of  the  Universe."  Which  reminds  me  that  I 
have  been  reading  your  verses  again  and  again  and 
I  shall  have,  for  what  they  're  worth,  some  remarks 
to  make  when  we  next  meet. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  127 

1925  F  ST.,  Spring,  1904. 

DEAR  MITCHELL,  —  I  largely  agree  with  what 
you  say  of  Viele's  book,  though  to  my  mind  you 
rate  it  a  little  too  high.  His  delight  in  words  seems 
to  me  far  his  strongest  trick.  He  says  not  very 
much.  Of  course  keep  Cain  till  April  1st  or  as  long 
as  you  wish.  As  you  may  imagine,  all  that  you  say 
about  it  in  your  letter  is  deeply  interesting  to  me. 
As  I ' ve  said  to  you,  you  are  the  only  person  from 
whom  I  expect  genuine  criticism  and  get  it.  As 
regards  the  stage  directions  I'll  say  this:  Although 
the  thing  has  no  quality  of  a  real  play,  nevertheless 
the  action  —  that  is,  the  main  points  of  the  action 
—  are  essential  to  the  expression  of  the  idea,  and 
therefore  it  is  necessary  that  there  should  be  some 
environment  indicated,  and  that  the  characters 
should  perform  certain  motions  (as  few  as  possible, 
of  course).  The  question,  then,  is  merely  this: 
whether  the  poem  is  more  or  less  interrupted 
and  the  reader  subjected  to  more  or  less  of  a  jar, 
by  having  environment  and  action  indicated  as 
briefly  and  technically  as  possible,  in  brackets,  or 
by  having  them  introduced  as  verse  into  the  body 


128  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

of  the  poem.  It  seemed  to  me,  despite  the  obvious 
absurdities,  the  former  was  the  method  most  frank 
and  honest,  and  least  likely  to  mar  the  poetic  and 
intellectual  integrity  of  the  whole.  Of  course  the 
mere  technicalities  could  be  eliminated  if  they 
seriously  jarred.  Thank  you  —  I  wish  I  could  — 
for  all  that  you  say,  which  I  find  very  just  and  of 
the  utmost  assistance  to  me  in  clarifying  and  en 
lightening  my  own  criticism;  and  thank  you,  above 
all,  for  your  interest,  which  is  valuable  to  me  be 
yond  words. 

I  'm  mighty  sorry  but  not  very  greatly  surprised 
to  hear  your  news  of  the  condition  of  the  stage. 
It 's  depressing  beyond  measure  to  know  that  the 
American  theatre  is  reserved  exclusively,  either 
for  importations,  or  the  worthless  manufactures 
of  almost  illiterate  Americans  who  regard  plays 
merely  as  merchandise,  and  who  would  manufac 
ture  boots  with  equal  enjoyment  and  success.  In 
deed  it's  most  depressing;  and  what  is  to  be  done? 
Your  assertion  that  the  American  public  will  take 
good  plays  as  well  as  bad  is  I  believe  quite  correct, 
but  unfortunately  it  doesn't  help  as  long  as  they'll 


THE   GREAT  ADVENTURE  ,129 

take  bad  plays  as  well  as  good.  The  stage  situa-~| 
tion  is  to  me  merely  another  sign  of  the  intellectual, 
moral  and  spiritual  childishness  of  the  American. 
Indeed  was  there  ever  such  an  anomaly  as  the 
American  man?  In  practical  affairs  his  cynicism, 
energy  and  capacity  are  simply  stupefying,  and  in 
every  other  respect  he  is  a  sentimental  idiot  pos 
sessing  neither  the  interest,  the  capacity,  nor  the 
desire  for  even  the  most  elementary  processes  of 
independent  thought.  Consider  for  one  moment 
his  position  as  a  domestic  animal  as  it  was  fifty 
years  ago  and  as  it  is  to-day.  Then  he  was  the 
unquestioned  head  of  his  family,  the  master  of  his 
house,  the  father  of  as  many  children  as  he  wanted 
to  have.  His  wife's  business  was  to  bear  his  chil 
dren  and  manage  his  household  to  suit  him,  and 
she  never  questioned  it.  To-day  he  is  absolutely 
dethroned.  A  woman  rules  in  his  stead.  His  wife 
finds  him  so  sexually  inapt  that  she  refuses  to  bear 
him  children  and  so  drivelling  in  every  way  except 
as  a  money-getter  that  she  compels  him  to  expend 
his  energies  solely  in  that  direction  while  she  leads 
a  discontented,  sterile,  stunted  life,  not  because 


130  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

she  genuinely  prefers  it  but  because  she  cannot 
find  a  first-rate  man  to  make  her  desire  to  be  the 
mother  of  his  children  and  to  live  seriously  and 
happily.  I  speak  of  course  only  of  the  well-to-do 
classes,  which  as  a  matter  of  fact  comprise  most 
real  Americans,  and  of  which  the  average  number 
of  children  per  family  is  under  two.  We  are,  dear 
Mitchell,  a  dying  race,  as  every  race  must  be  of 
which  the  men  are,  as  men  and  not  accumulators, 
third-rate.  American  women  don't  fall  in  love  with 
the  American  men  (I  mean,  really)  and  they're 
quite  right;  only  a  woman  won't  have  children  by 
a  man  she 's  not  really  in  love  with,  and  when  you 
think  of  the  travail  and  the  peril  of  death  can  you 
blame  her?  It's  an  odd  situation;  we  are  a  dying 
race  and  really  we've  never  lived. 

Forgive  this  long  dissertation.  I  got  started  and 
could  not  stop. 

1925  F  ST.,  April,  1904. 

DEAR  MITCHELL,  —  I  'm  nearly  in  a  position 
now  to  answer  the  question  which  we  discussed  — 
perhaps  you  remember  —  last  summer  at  Tucka- 
nuck:  namely  whether  or  not  Jesus  Christ  ap- 


THE  GREAT   ADVENTURE  131 

peared  as  the  logical  outcome  of  the  Jewish  reli 
gious  tradition.  You  remember  I  contended  he 
was  wholly  sporadic  and  attached  to  nothing.  I 
begin  now  to  see  I  was  in  a  measure  quite  wrong, 
and  perhaps  to  a  small  extent  right.  I  am  very 
anxious  to  talk  it  over  with  you  when  you  return 
here,  and  also  to  discuss  with  you  the  whole  state 
of  thought  and  feeling  in  Judsea  at  the  time  of 
Christ's  appearance.  All  this,  you  will  guess,  is 
the  result  of  work  I  've  been  doing  in  preparation 
for  writing  the  Christ-play  of  which  I  spoke  to  you 
and  which,  to  my  immense  delight,  you  seem  to 
approve  —  at  least  the  idea  —  in  your  last  letter. 
I've  already  gone  far  enough  to  realize  that  no 
subject  could  be  more  fascinating  or  more  inter 
esting.  Jesus  Christ  and  his  teachings,  which  are 
neglected  and  unknown,  form  a  background 
against  which  the  dark  threads  of  the  lives  and 
passions  and  thoughts  of  worldly  men  should 
stand  out  like  the  black  bars  on  the  solar  spectrum. 
I  have  re-read  Kenan's  "Vie  de  Jesus"  and  it's 
interesting  in  many  ways  and  a  "beau  livre";  but, 
dear  Mitchell,  can  you  imagine  a  man  spending 


132  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

ten  years  on  the  study  of  Jesus  Christ  and  at  last 
summing  up  his  appreciation  of  the  man  in  this 
phrase:  "C'est  un  charmeur!"  It's  staggering. 

1925  F  ST.  (Spring  of  1904). 

DEAR  MITCHELL,  —  I  imagine  what  you  say  of 
solitude  is  very  true.  "Tout  se  paie" —  in  one 
form  or  another.  Certainly  you  have  kept  singu 
larly  balanced,  singularly  vital  and  sane  —  in  the 
true  sense.  What  I  shall  be  in  ten  years  there's 
no  guessing.  One  stakes  one's  life  on  the  chance 
of  ransoming  "one  lost  moment  with  a  rhyme" 
and  the  wheel  turns  — 

Of  course  keep  "Cam"  as  long  as  you  want.  I 
really  feel  ashamed  to  bother  you  with  it  when  you 
are  so  busy,  but  it's  vastly  important  to  me  to 
know  precisely  what  you  think;  whether,  in  your 
deliberate  opinion,  it's  the  real  thing  in  any  degree 
whatever,  and  not  merely  and  utterly  —  litera 
ture!  But  don't,  I  beg  you,  look  at  it  until  it's 
convenient.  I  shan't  write  another  long  thing  in 
verse  for  some  time.  Since  publishing  "  Cain"  I  've 
had  a  time  of  horrible  reaction  and  "abattement" 


THE   GREAT  ADVENTURE  133 

—  the  sort  of  thing  we  all  go  through  occasionally. 
This  has  become  a  drearily  egotistical  and  dull 
letter.  .  .  . 

My  days  in  New  York  were  glorious,  the  only 
good  days  I've  had  since  finishing  that  poem.  I 
need  hardly  say  how  deeply  I  hope  you  will  dis 
pose  of  your  plays  to  your  satisfaction  —  for  your 
sake  and  for  the  sake  of  the  stage. 

1925  F  ST.,  WASHINGTON 
(Spring,  1904). 

I  think,  dear  Mitchell,  that  we  really  about  agree 
as  to  the  Sonnet.  The  first  rate  ones  are  terribly 
few  and  in  diverse  forms.  Witness  Beaudelaire. 

My  dear  man,  I  've  got  hold  of  such  a  splendid 
thing  to  write  —  immense.  I  'm  shutting  down  on 
Society,  in  which  we've  been  wandering  this  win 
ter  to  the  detriment  of  all  I  value  in  life,  and  I'm 
getting  to  work  —  God  be  praised.  I  wish  I  could 
have  a  talk  with  you  about  this  and  so  many  other 
things.  One  gets  glimpses,  such  glimpses,  of  in 
credible,  tremendous  things.  I  wish  you  were  by 


134  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

so  we  might  share  them.  I  feel  always  tempted  to 
run  over  for  a  day  to  see  you,  but  I'm  afraid  it's 
quite  impossible  now.  Still  if  the  desire  pushes  me 
too  hard  I  '11  turn  up  some  afternoon.  Spring-Rice 
has  been  here  for  a  week  and  I  had  one  splendid 
talk  with  him  and  wished  more  than  ever  you  were 
here.  There's  a  man  who  does,  really,  keep  up 
wonderfully  and  by  a  very  peculiar  faculty  he  has 
of  remaining,  au  fond,  quite  detached  from  his  own 
circumstances  and  experience.  He  left  to-night, 
alas !  He  goes  back  to  Russia,  about  which  he  had 
absorbing  things  to  say.  Now  that  he's  gone, 
once  more  the  "void  weighs  on  us,"  —  the  dread 
ful,  blank,  mild  nothingness  of  this  nice  agreeable, 
easy,  spacious  vacuity  (comp.  James).  And  here  I 
am  again  alone  beyond  belief,  but,  fortunately, 
with  a  very  interesting  thing  to  do,  so  I  'm  very 
well  off. 

NAHANT,  MASS.,  October,  1904. 

DEAR  MITCHELL,  —  I  was  extremely  glad  to  get 
your  note  and  I  would  have  answered  it  before 
had  not  events  compelled  me.  On  the  eleventh  my 
friend  Stickney  died  —  quite  suddenly  at  the  last. 


THE   GREAT  ADVENTURE  135 

On  the  fourteenth  we  buried  him.  He  was  thirty 
years  old  —  by  far  the  most  promising  man  I  have 
known,  his  best  work  still  and  surely  to  come. 
Under  the  terrible  test  of  a  mortal  disease  his 
mind  and  character  rose  to  higher  levels  than 
they  had  ever  touched  before.  He  died,  really,  at 
the  height  of  his  powers.  The  future  held  nothing 
for  him  but  suffering,  mental  and  physical.  He  is 
very  well  out  of  it.  Dear  Mitchell,  what  a  life 
it  is !  —  what  a  life !  I  am  having  an  undoubtedly 
hard  time.  So,  it  must  be  said,  are  other  people. 
I  wish  I  could  get  to  New  York  now  and  see  you. 
I  feel  more  deeply  than  ever  how  invaluable  your 
friendship  is  to  me  and  how  incalculably  better 
than  anything  else  in  life,  such  friendship  as  I 
think  you  and  I  share  together  is  in  the  last  analy 
sis.  I  would  come  if  I  had  the  energy,  but  I  am 
pretty  well  done  up  morally  and  physically.  I 
shall  be  in  New  York,  though,  from  November  9th 
for  some  days.  Could  n't  you  be  there  then  too? 
It  would  be  to  me  so  true  a  happiness  to  see  you 
again. 


136         GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Naturally,  too,  in  the  social  and  literary  se 
quence,  young  Lodge  fell  under  the  charm  of 
Henry  James :  — 

TO  HIS  MOTHER 

WASHINGTON,  May,  1905. 

To  this  even  existence  of  mine  there  has  been 
one  delightful  interruption,  namely  the  lecture  and 
subsequent  visions  of  Henry  James.  The  lecture 
was  profoundly,  and  to  one  who  writes  himself, 
wonderfully  interesting;  so  many  splendid  things 
which  had  been  long  at  home  in  my  own  conscious 
ness  and  which  I  first  heard  then,  perfectly  and 

irresistibly  expressed.    The  amiable  Miss  T 

had  asked  us  to  tea  for  the  next  day;  where  I  went 

and  found,  besides  James,  old  Mrs. ,  a  most 

original  and  charming  and  distinguished  person, 
conveying,  through  all  her  rather  stiff  but  flatter 
ing  courtesy,  the  vivid  impression  that  she  might 
be,  on  occasion,  equally  original  and  the  reverse  of 
charming.  There  were  besides  some  unremarkable 
people  who  all  left,  leaving  me  the  chance  to  talk 
with  James,  which  I  did  with  the  greatest  delight 
then  and  also  the  next  morning  when,  at  his  invi- 


THE   GREAT   ADVENTURE  137 

tation,  I  went  with  him  to  the  Capitol  and  the 
Library  for  two  most  interesting  hours.  This,  I 
believe,  can  be  said  of  James,  though  it  is  not  the 
most  obvious  remark  to  make  of  him,  and  is,  at  the 
same  time,  the  rarest  and  most  important  compli 
ment  that  can  be  paid  to  any  creative  artist  — 
namely,  that  he  is,  in  matters  of  art,  incorruptibly 
honest,  and  in  consequence  hugely  expensive.  He 
is,  I  mean,  as  an  artist,  built  through  and  through 
of  the  same  material  —  which  you  like  or  not 
according  to  your  fancy.  His  very  style  —  again 
whether  you  like  it  or  not — bears  by  its  mere  tor 
tuous  originality,  if  by  no  other  sign,  infallible  wit 
ness  that  he  has,  at  immense  expenditure,  done  all 
the  work  —  artistically  and  intellectually  —  and 
that  all  the  work  is  his  own.  In  ideas  and  art  he 
lives  in  a  palace  built  of  his  own  time  and  thought, 
while  the  usual,  you  might  say  the  ubiquitous, 
average  person  and  literary  prostitute  lives  con 
tentedly  in  one  of  an  interminable  row  of  hovels, 
built,  so  to  speak,  on  an  endless  contract  from  bare 
material  stolen  from  Time's  intellectual  scrap- 
heap.  What  it  all  amounts  to  is  that,  whether  you 


138  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

like  James  or  not,  whether  you  think  he  is  all  on 
the  wrong  track  or  not,  you  are  bound  to  respect 
him,  for  if  you  do  not,  whom,  in  this  age  of  uni 
versal  machine-made  cheapness,  whom  more  than 
James  with  his  immense  talent  and  industry  and 
his  small  sales,  are  you  going  to  respect? 

This  is  a  long  garrulous,  egotistical  (to  a  degree), 
and  perhaps  you  will  say,  rather  incoherent  letter. 
So  I  will  spare  you  any  further  palpitating  details 
of  my  obscure  life. 

WASHINGTON,  June,  1905. 

Indeed,  I  wish  I  might  have  been  with  you,  but 
on  the  other  hand  I  have  done  an  immense  deal  by 
being  quietly  and  in  much  long  solitude  just  now 
at  this  time.  I  have  lived  high  most  of  my  working 
hours,  and  in  consequence  my  volume  of  sonnets 

-  "The  Great  Adventure,"  I  call  it,  which  is,  I 
think,  a  good  title  —  lies  before  me  all  but  finished 

—  seventy-five  sonnets  or  more,  with  which  I  am 
pretty  well  pleased.  I  feel  lonely,  as  I  always  do 
when  I  am  hard  at  work,  but  I  also  feel  much  ex 
hilaration.  These  are  my  great  years.  Well,  I  am 
sure  I  must  have  said  all  this  before  to  you.  My 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  139 

interest  in  myself  is  so  poignant  that  I  elude  it  with 
difficulty. 

Joe's  volume  represents  for  me  a  good  deal  of 
work  and  an  experience  of  grief  that  neither  gives 
nor  receives  consolation,  which  has  left  its  indelible 
mark  upon  me — which  is  good.  For  I  believe  there 
are  but  two  ways  with  real  grief :  get  rid  of  it  if  you 
can;  but  if  you  can't,  then  take  all  you  can  get  of 
it,  live  in  it,  work  in  it,  experience  it  as  far  as  you 
are  capable  of  experiencing  anything.  Let  it  nour 
ish  you!  as  it  will,  as  anything  will  that  is  real,  and 
in  direct  proportion  to  its  reality  and  significance. 
I'll  tell  you  that  I  sent  my  volume  of  sonnets  to 
Houghton  &  Mifflin,  who  wrote  me  that  they  held 
my  work  in  high  consideration;  which,  I  suppose, 
indicates  that  some  people  they  have  seen  think 
well  of  "Cain."  Also,  perhaps  you  have  seen 
"Moriturus"  (by  me)  in  the  July  "  Scribner." 

"The  Great  Adventure"  was  published  in 
October,  —  a  small  volume  of  ninety  pages,  of 
which  nearly  one  third  were  devoted  to  the  mem 
ory  of  Stickney:  — 


140  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

He  said:  "We  are  the  Great  Adventurers; 
This  is  the  Great  Adventure  :  thus  to  be 
Alive,  and,  on  the  universal  sea 
Of  being,  lone  yet  dauntless  mariners. 

This  is  the  Great  Adventure!"  All  of  us 
Who  saw  his  dead,  deep-visioned  eyes,  could  see, 
After  the  Great  Adventure,  immanent, 
Splendid  and  strange,  the  Great  Discovery. 

Love  and  Death  were  the  two  themes  of  these 
sonnets,  almost  as  personal  as  the  "Song  of  the 
Wave."  Underneath  the  phrases  and  motives  of 
each,  lay  almost  always  the  sense  of  striving  against 
the  elements,  like  Odysseus,  or  against  the  myste 
ries,  like  Plato :  — 

"At  least,"  he  said,  "we  spent  with  Socrates 
Some  memorable  days,  and  in  our  youth 
Were  curious  and  respectful  of  the  Truth, 
Thrilled  with  perfections  and  discoveries, 
And  with  the  everlasting  mysteries 
We  were  irreverent  and  unsatisfied,  — 
And  so  we  are!"  he  said  .  .  . 

The  irreverence  mattered  little,  since  it  was 
mostly  the  mere  effervescence  of  youth  and  health; 
but  the  dissatisfaction  went  deep,  and  made  a 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  141 

serious  strain  on  his  energy,  —  a  strain  which 
Stickney's  death  first  made  vital.  The  verses  be 
gan  to  suggest  discouragement:  — 

In  Time's  cathedral,  Memory,  like  a  ghost, 
Crouched  in  the  narrow  twilight  of  the  nave, 
Fumbles  with  thin  pathetic  hands  to  save  j 
Relics  of  all  things  lived  and  loved  and  lost. 
Life  fares  and  feasts,  and  Memory  counts  the  cost 
With  unrelenting  lips  that  dare  confess 
Life's  secret  failures,  sins  and  loneliness. 
And  life's  exalted  hopes,  defiled  and  crossed. 

i  "The  Great  Adventure"  probably  marked  the 
instant  when  life  did,  in  fact,  hover  between  the 
two  motives,  —  the  beginning  and  the  end,  — 
Love  and  Death.  Both  were,  for  the  moment,  in 
full  view,  equally  near,  and  equally  intense,  with 
the  same  background  of  the  unknown :  — 

In  the  shadow  of  the  Mystery 
We  watched  for  light  with  sleepless  vigilance. 
Yet  still,  how  far  soever  we  climbed  above 
The  nether  levels,  always,  like  a  knife, 
We  felt  the  chill  of  fear's  blind  bitter  breath; 
For  still  a  secret  crazed  the  heart  of  Love, 
An  endless  question  blurred  the  eyes  of  Life, 
A  baffling  silence  sealed  the  lips  of  Death. 


142  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Meanwhile  life  went  on  with  what  most  people 
would,  at  least  in  retrospect,  regard  as  altogether 
exceptional  happiness.  The  small  circle  of  sympa 
thetic  companions  was  immensely  strengthened 
by  the  addition  of  Edith  Wharton,  whose  unerring 
taste  and  finished  workmanship  served  as  a  correc 
tive  to  his  youthful  passion  for  license.  Her  fine 
appreciation  felt  this  quality  as  the  most  insistent 
mark  of  his  nature:  — 

"Abundance,  —  that  is  the  word  which  comes 
to  me  whenever  I  try  to  describe  him.  During  the 
twelve  years  of  our  friendship,  —  and  from  the  day 
that  it  began,  —  I  had,  whenever  we  were  together, 
the  sense  of  his  being  a  creature  as  profusely  as 
he  was  finely  endowed.  There  was  an  exceptional 
delicacy  in  his  abundance,  and  an  extraordinary 
volume  in  his  delicacy." 

Life  is  not  wholly  thrown  away  on  ideals,  if  only 
a  single  artist's  touch  catches  like  this  the  life  and 
movement  of  a  portrait.  Such  a  picture  needs  no 
proof;  it  is  itself  convincing. 

"The  man  must  have  had  a  sort  of  aura  about 
him.  Perhaps  he  was  one  of  those  who  walk  on  the 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  143 

outer  rim  of  the  world,  aware  of  the  jumping-off 
place;  which  seems  the  only  way  to  walk,  —  but 
few  take  it.  Odd  that  your  article  should  have 
appealed  so  much  to  me,  when  I  know  so  little  of 
the  subject!" 

The  more  competent  the  reader,  —  and  this 
reader,  though  unnamed,  was  among  the  most 
competent, —  the  more  complete  is  the  conviction; 
and  the  same  simple  quality  of  the  truest  art  runs 
through  the  whole  of  Mrs.  Wharton's  painting, 
to  which  the  critic  was  alluding.  Every  touch  of 
her  hand  takes  the  place  of  proof. 

"All  this,"  she  continues,  "on  the  day  when  he 
was  first  brought  to  see  me,  —  a  spring  afternoon 
of  the  year  1898,  in  Washington,  —  was  lit  up  by 
a  beautiful  boyish  freshness,  which,  as  the  years 
passed,  somehow  contrived  to  ripen  without  fad 
ing.  In  the  first  five  minutes  of  our  talk,  he  gave 
himself  with  the  characteristic  wholeness  that 
made  him  so  rare  a  friend;  showing  me  all  the  sides 
of  his  varied  nature;  the  grave  sense  of  beauty,  the 
flashing  contempt  of  meanness,  and  that  large 
spring  of  kindly  laughter  that  comes  to  many  only 


144  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

as  a  result  of  the  long  tolerance  of  life.  It  was  one 
of  his  gifts  thus  to  brush  aside  the  preliminaries  of 
acquaintance,  and  enter  at  once,  with  a  kind  of 
royal  ease,  on  the  rights  and  privileges  of  friend 
ship;  as  though  —  one  might  think  —  with  a  fore 
boding  of  the  short  time  given  him  to  enjoy  them. 
"Aside  from  this,  however,  there  was  nothing  of 
the  pathetically  predestined  in  the  young  Cabot 
Lodge.  Then  —  and  to  the  end  —  he  lived  every 
moment  to  the  full,  and  the  first  impression  he 
made  was  of  a  joyous  physical  life.  His  sweet  smile, 
his  easy  strength,  his  deep  eyes  full  of  laughter  and 
visions,  —  these  struck  one  even  before  his  look  of 
intellectual  power.  I  have  seldom  seen  anyone  in 
whom  the  natural  man  was  so  wholesomely  blent 
with  the  reflecting  intelligence;  and  it  was  not  the 
least  of  his  charms  that  he  sent  such  stout  roots 
into  the  earth,  and  had  such  a  hearty  love  for  all 
he  drew  from  it.  Nothing  was  common  or  unclean 
to  him  but  the  vulgar,  the  base,  and  the  insincere, 
and  his  youthful  impatience  at  the  littleness  of 
human  nature  was  tempered  by  an  unusually  ma 
ture  sense  of  its  humors." 


THE   GREAT  ADVENTURE  145 

While  young  Lodge,  or  any  other  young  artist, 
might  find  it  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world 
to  give  himself  without  thought  or  hesitation  to 
another  artist,  like  Mrs.  Wharton,  it  by  no  means 
followed  that  he  could  give  himself  to  men  or  wo 
men  who  had  not  her  gifts,  or  standards,  or  sym 
pathies.  He  could  no  more  do  this  than  he  could 
write  doggerel.  However  much  he  tried,  and  the 
more  he  tried,  to  lessen  the  gap  between  himself  — 
his  group  of  personal  friends  —  and  the  public,  the 
gap  grew  steadily  wider;  the  circle  of  sympathies 
enlarged  itself  not  at  all,  or  with  desperate  slow 
ness;  and  this  consciousness  of  losing  ground,  — 
of  failure  to  find  a  larger  horizon  of  friendship  be 
yond  his  intimacy;  —  the  growing  fear  that,  be 
yond  this  narrow  range,  no  friends  existed  in  the 
immense  void  of  society,  —  or  could  exist,  in  the 
form  of  society  which  he  lived  in,  —  the  suffocat 
ing  sense  of  talking  and  singing  in  a  vacuum  that 
allowed  no  echo  to  return,  grew  more  and  more 
oppressive  with  each  effort  to  overcome  it.  The 
experience  is  common  among  artists,  and  has  often 
led  to  violent  outbursts  of  egotism,  of  self-assertion, 


146        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

of  vanity;  but  the  New  England  temper  distrusts 
itself  as  well  as  the  world  it  lives  in,  and  rarely 
yields  to  eccentricities  of  conduct.  Emerson  him 
self,  protesting  against  every  usual  tendency  of 
society,  respected  in  practice  all  its  standards. 

"One  is  accustomed,"  continued  Mrs.  Wharton, 
"in  enjoying  the  comradeship  of  young  minds,  to 
allow  in  them  for  a  measure  of  passing  egotism, 
often  the  more  marked  in  proportion  to  their  sen 
sitiveness  to  impressions;  but  it  was  Cabot  Lodge's 
special  grace  to  possess  the  sensitiveness  without 
the  egotism.  Always  as  free  from  pedantry  as 
from  conceit,  he  understood  from  the  first  the  give 
and  take  of  good  talk,  and  was  not  only  quick  to 
see  the  other  side  of  an  argument,  but  ready  to  re 
inforce  it  by  his  sympathetic  interpretation.  And 
because  of  this  responsiveness  of  mind,  and  of  the 
liberating,  vivifying  nature  from  which  it  sprang, 
he  must  always,  to  his  friends,  remain  first  of  all, 
and  most  incomparably,  a  Friend." 

This  quality  was  strongly  felt  by  others.  One 
who  knew  him  intimately  when  he  was  Secretary 
of  the  British  Embassy  in  Washington  and  later 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  147 

when  they  were  together  in  Berlin,  Sir  Cecil  Spring- 
Rice,  now  minister  of  Great  Britain  in  Stockholm, 
wrote  of  him  after  his  death:  — 

"The  first  time  I  saw  him  was  at  Nahant  when 
the  children  were  all  there  together;  and  since  then 
I  have  always  seemed  to  know  him  closely  and 
intimately.  We  bathed  together  there,  and  I  re 
member  so  well  the  immense  joy  he  had  in  jumping 
into  the  water,  and  then  lying  out  in  the  sun  till  he 
was  all  browned  —  as  strong  and  healthy  a  human 
creature  as  I  have  ever  seen,  and  exulting  in  his 
life.  Then  we  rode  together  at  Washington,  and  I 
can  see  him  now  galloping  along  in  the  woody 
country  near  Rock  Creek.  It  did  n't  strike  me 
then  that  he  was  anything  but  a  strong  healthy 
boy,  absolutely  straight,  sincere,  and  natural. 

"It  was  n't  till  I  saw  a  good  deal  of  him  in  Berlin 
that  I  realized  what  a  rare  and  extraordinary  mind 
he  had.  He  was  then  studying  hard  at  philosophy. 
In  an  extraordinarily  quick  time  he  learnt  German 
and  seemed  to  take  naturally  to  the  most  difficult 
books — just  as  he  had  done  to  the  sea,  without  any 
conscious  effort.  We  had  many  talks  then,  and  his 


148  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

talk  was  most  inspiring.  He  constantly  lived  face 
to  face  with  immense  problems,  which  he  thought 
out  thoroughly  and  earnestly,  —  things  men  often 
read  and  study  in  order  to  pass  examinations  or 
achieve  distinction;  but  I  am  quite  sure  with  him 
there  was  no  object  except  just  the  attainment  and 
the  presence  of  truth.  He  had  a  most  living  mind, 
and  a  character  absolutely  independent;  resolved 
on  finding  out  things  by  himself,  and  living  by  his 
own  lights  and  thinking  out  his  own  problems. 
Nothing  would  have  stopped  him  or  interfered 
with  him.  In  all  my  experience  of  people  about  the 
world,  I  never  knew  anyone  so  'detached,'  deaf  to 
the  usual  voices  of  the  world;  and  so  determined 
to  live  in  the  light  of  Truth,  taking  nothing  for 
granted  till  he  had  proved  it  by  his  own  original 
thought.  He  had  greatly  developed  when  I  last  saw 
him  in  Washington,  during  the  few  days  I  spent 
there.  I  had  two  long  talks  with  him  in  his  house. 
I  think  he  was  the  sort  of  stuff  that  in  the  middle 
ages  would  have  made  a  great  saint  or  a  great 
heresiarch  —  I  dare  say  we  have  no  use  for  such 
people  now;  I  wonder  if  he  found  he  was  born  out 


THE   GREAT   ADVENTURE  149 

of  his  time,  and  that  ours  was  not  a  world  for  him. 
I  am  not  thinking  of  what  he  wrote  or  what  he  said, 
but  of  the  atmosphere  in  which  he  lived,  and  the 
surroundings  of  his  own  soul  —  what  his  thoughts 
lived  and  moved  in. 

"In  that  detachment  and  independence  and 
courage  I  have  never  known  any  one  like  him.  Yet 
it  was  hardly  courage:  for  he  did  n't  give  the  en 
emy  a  thought. 

"I  wonder  if  one  often  meets  a  man  in  these 
times  who  is  literally  capable  of  standing  alone,  to 
whom  the  noises  and  sights  of  the  world,  which 
to  most  people  are  everything,  are  nothing,  abso 
lutely  nothing  —  the  state  of  mind  of  some  one 
who  is  madly  in  love,  but  with  him  it  seemed  nor 
mal  and  natural,  an  everyday  habit  of  being. 

"It  was  only  last  week  I  had  a  long  think  as  I 
was  walking  about  through  these  lonely  woods 
here,  and  I  was  wondering  whether  I  should  see 
you  all  soon  again,  and  I  was  saying  to  myself:  At 
any  rate  Bay  will  have  grown  —  he  won't  disap 
point  me:  he  is  the  sort  of  man  who  is  bound  to  get 
bigger  every  day  —  and  he  is  younger  and  stronger 


150        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

than  I  and  he  will  last.  — And  about  how  many 
men  of  his  age  could  one  say  that  with  certainty, 
that  time  would  surely  improve  and  perfect  him, 
and  that  with  every  new  meeting  one  could  gain 
something  new? 

"And  that  is  how  I  thought  of  him  naturally." 
Like  most  of  the  clever  young  men  of  his  time, — 
Oscar  Wilde,  Bernard  Shaw,  Gilbert  Chesterton, 
— he  loved  a  good  paradox,  and  liked  to  chase  it 
into  its  burrow.  "When  you  are  accustomed  to 
anything,  you  are  estranged  from  it";  and  his  su 
preme  gift  for  liking  was  never  to  get  accustomed 
to  things  or  people.  By  way  of  a  historical  paradox 
he  maintained  that  the  Church  was  devised  as  a 
protection  against  the  direct  rays  of  Christ's  spirit, 
which,  undimmed,  would  compel  to  action  and 
change  of  character.  By  way  of  a  poetical  para 
dox  he  loved  Walt  Whitman  to  fanaticism,  and 
quoted,  as  his  favorite  description  of  the  world, 
Walt's  "little  plentiful  mannikins  skipping  about 
in  collars  and  tailcoats."  Yet  he  sometimes  de 
clared  that  his  favorite  line  in  poetry  was  Swin 
burne's  :  — 


THE   GREAT  ADVENTURE  151 

Out  of  the  golden  remote  wild  west  where  the  sea  without  shore 

is. 
Full  of  the  sunset,  and  sad,  if  at  all,  with  the  fulness  of  joy. 

Perhaps,  too,  if  he  had  chosen  a  verse  of  poetry 
to  suggest  his  own  nature,  after  the  description  of 
Mrs.  Wharton  he  might  have  found  it  in  another 
line  of  Swinburne's :  — 

Some  dim  derision  of  mysterious  laughter. 

However  remote  he  thought  himself  from  his 
world,  he  was,  in  fact,  very  much  of  his  literary 
time,  —  and  would  not  have  been  recognized  at  all 
by  any  other.  Like  most  of  his  young  contempo 
raries  in  literature,  he  loved  his  paradoxes  chiefly 
because  they  served  as  arrows  for  him  to  practise 
his  art  on  the  social  conventions  which  served  for 
a  target;  and  the  essence  of  his  natural  simple- 
mindedness  showed  itself  in  his  love  for  this  boy's- 
play  of  fresh  life  which  he  tired  of  only  too  soon,  as 
he  will  himself  tell  in  his  "  Noctambulist."  He 
knew,  at  bottom,  that  the  world  he  complained  of 
had  as  little  faith  in  its  conventions  as  he  had;  but, 
apart  from  the  fun  and  easy  practice  of  paradox, 


152        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Lodge's  most  marked  trait  of  mind  lay  in  his  in 
stinctive  love  of  logic,  which  he  was  probably  not 
even  aware  of,  although  often  —  as  is  seen  every 
where  in  the  "Cain"  and  "Herakles"  —  the  rea 
soning  is  as  close  and  continuous  as  it  might  be  in 
Plato  or  Schopenhauer. 

This  contrast  of  purposes  disconcerted  most 
readers.  The  usual  reader  finds  the  effort  of  fol 
lowing  a  single  train  of  thought  too  severe  for  him; 
but  even  professional  critics  rebel  against  a  para 
dox  almost  in  the  degree  that  it  is  logical,  and 
find  the  Greek  severity  of  Prometheus,  in  its  mo 
tive,  a  worse  fault  than  what  they  call  the  "ex-  .~^. 
cess  of  loveliness,"  which,  in  Shelley,  "militates 
against  the  awful  character  of  the  drama."  In 
modern  society,  the  Greek  drama  is  a  paradox; 
which  has  not  prevented  most  of  the  greatest 
nineteenth -century  poets  from  putting  their 
greatest  poetry  into  that  form;  and  Lodge  loved 
it  because  of  its  rigorous  logic  even  more  than 
for  its  unequalled  situations.  Lodge  could  be 
exuberant  enough  when  he  pleased,  but  what  he 
exacted  from  his  readers  was  chiefly  mind. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE  153 

With  this  preamble,  such  readers  as  care  for  in 
tellectual  poetry  can  now  take  up  his  work  of  the 
years  1906  and  1907,  published  under  the  titles, 
"The  Soul's  Inheritance"  and  "Herakles."  "The 
Soul's  Inheritance"  appeared  only  after  his  death, 
but  in  the  natural  order  of  criticism  it  conies 
first.  Although  the  vigor  of  his  verse  was  greater, 
there  were  already  signs  that  his  physical  strength 
was  less,  and  that  he  was  conscious  of  it.  His 
health  had  begun  to  cause  uneasiness;  his  heart 
warned  him  against  strains;  but  he  scorned  warn 
ings,  and  insisted  that  his  health  was  never  bet 
ter.  Submission  to  an  obnoxious  fact  came  hard 
to  him,  at  all  times;  but  the  insidious  weakness  of 
literary  workmen  lies  chiefly  in  their  inability  to 
realize  that  quiet  work  like  theirs,  which  calls 
for  no  physical  effort,  may  be  a  stimulant  more 
exhausting  than  alcohol,  and  as  morbid  as  mor 
phine.  The  fascination  of  the  silent  midnight,  the 
veiled  lamp,  the  smouldering  fire,  the  white  paper 
asking  to  be  covered  with  elusive  words;  the 
thoughts  grouping  themselves  into  architectural 
forms,  and  slowly  rising  into  dreamy  structures, 


154        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

constantly  changing,  shifting,  beautifying  their 
outlines,  —  this  is  the  subtlest  of  solitary  temp 
tations,  and  the  loftiest  of  the  intoxications  of 
genius. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

"  HERAKLES" 

"THE  SOUL'S  INHERITANCE"  was  a  poem  de 
livered  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  at 
Cambridge  in  1906,  and  in  delivering  it,  Lodge 
discovered  in  himself  a  new  power  that  would  pro 
bably  have  led  him  in  time  into  a  new  field,  where 
he  could  put  himself  into  closer  relations  with  the 
world.  His  delivery  was  good,  his  voice  admira 
ble,  and  his  power  over  his  audience  was  evident. 
He  was  probably  an  orator  by  right  of  inheritance, 
though  he  had  never  cared  to  assert  the  claim, 
preferring  to  rest  his  distinction  on  his  poetry. 

In  this  poem  he  reiterated  his  life-long  theme 
that  the  Soul,  or  Will,  is  the  supreme  energy  of 
life:- 

That  here  and  now,  no  less  for  each  of  us, 
That  inward  voice,  cogent  as  revelation, 
That  trance  of  truth's  sublime  discovery, 
Which  in  the  soul  of  Socrates  wrought  out 
Gold  from  the  gross  ore  of  humanity, 


156  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Still  speak,  still  hold,  still  work  their  alchemy; 
That  here  and  now  and  in  the  soul's  advance, 
And  by  the  soul's  perfection,  we  may  feel 
The  thought  of  Buddha  in  our  mortal  brain, 
The  human  heart  of  Jesus  in  our  breast, 
And  in  our  will  the  strength  of  Hercules! 

Again,  as  always  in  his  poetry,  he  recurred  to  the 
sense  of  struggle,  of  — 

The  multitudinous  menace  of  the  night, 
and  the  soul's  need  to  stand  out,  — 
Importunate  and  undissuadable, 

over  the  utmost  verge  of  venture:  — 

There  in  our  hearts  the  burning  lamp  of  love, 
There  in  our  sense  the  rhythm  and  amplitude, 
And  startled  splendor  of  the  seas  of  song. 

This  last  verse,  —  the  "  startled  splendor  of  the 
seas  of  song,"  —  was  one  of  the  kind  in  which 
he  delighted,  and  which  he  had  a  rare  power  of 
framing,  but  the  thought  was  ever  the  same:  the 
Soul  of  Man  was  the  Soul  of  God;  and  it  was 
repeated  in  various  forms  in  the  three  sonnets 
attached  to  the  blank  verse:  — 


HERAKLES  157 

Strangely,  inviolably  aloof,  alone, 

Once  shall  it  hardly  come  to  pass  that  we, 

As  with  his  Cross,  as  up  his  Calvary, 

Burdened  and  blind,  ascend  and  share  his  throne. 

Again  it  was  repeated  in  the  poem  called  "Pil 
grims,"  delivered  at  the  annual  dinner  of  the  New 
England  Society,  in  New  York,  December,  1906. 
The  theme,  on  such  an  occasion  and  before  such 
an  audience,  in  the  fumes  of  dinner  and  tobacco, 
was  adventurous,  but  Lodge  adhered  to  it  bravely, 
and  insisted  all  the  more  on  its  value,  — 

Lest  we  grow  tired  and  tame  and  temperate. 
He  boldly  asserted:  "We  are  the  Pilgrims,"  and 
proved  it  by  attaching  to  the  blank  verse  three 
sonnets,  as  beautiful  as  he  ever  wrote:  — 

They  are  gone.  .  .  .  They  have  all  left  us,  one  by  one: 

Swiftly,  with  undissuadable  strong  tread, 

Cuirassed  in  song,  with  wisdom  helmeted. 

They  are  gone  before  us,  into  the  dark,  alone.  .  .  . 
Upward  their  wings  rushed  radiant  to  the  sun; 

Seaward  the  ships  of  their  emprise  are  sped; 

Onward  their  starlight  of  desire  is  shed; 

Their  trumpet-call  is  forward;  —  they  are  gone! 
Let  us  take  thought  and  go!  —  we  know  not  why 

Nor  whence  nor  where,  —  let  us  take  wings  and  fly! 


158  GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Let  us  take  ship  and  sail,  take  heart  and  dare! 
Let  us  deserve  at  last,  as  they  have  done, 
To  say  of  all  men  living  and  dead  who  share 
The  soul's  supreme  adventure,  —  We  are  gone! 

These  verses  appeared  in  print  only  after  his 
death,  as  though  he  had  intended  them  for  his  epi 
taph;  and  perhaps  he  did,  for  he  continued  in  the 
same  tone:  — 

Let  us  go  hence!  —  however  dark  the  way, 

Haste!  —  lest  we  lose  the  clear,  ambitious  sense 
Of  what  is  ours  to  gain  and  to  gainsay. 

Let  us  go  hence,  lest  dreadfully  we  die! 

Two'poems  cast  in  the  same  form  followed:  "Life 
in  Love,"  and  "Love  in  Life";  which  return  to  the 
intensely  personal  theme.  Readers  who  feel  the 
theme  will  probably  feel  the  poetry  as  the  highest 
he  ever  reached  in  feeling.  Again  the  three  sonnets 
follow,  with  their  studied  beauties  of  expression: 

Her  voice  is  pure  and  grave  as  song; 

Her  lips  are  flushed  as  sunset  skies; 

The  power,  the  myth,  the  mysteries 

Of  life  and  death  in  silence  throng 
The  secret  of  her  silences; 

Her  face  is  sumptuous  and  strong, 

And  twilights  far  within  prolong 

The  spacious  glory  of  her  eyes. 


HERAKLES  159 

On  these  themes  of  Love  and  Life  Lodge  had 
dwelt  without  interruption  from  the  start;  and 
now,  suddenly,  without  apparent  steps  of  transi 
tion,  he  passed  to  a  new  motive,  —  Doubt!  "The 
Noctambulist"  suggests  some  change,  physical  or 
moral;  some  new  influence  or  ripened  growth,  or 
fading  youth.  Perhaps  he  would  himself  have 
traced  the  influence  and  the  change,  to  the  death 
of  Stickney.  Mrs.  Wharton  says  that  "in  its  har 
mony  of  thought  and  form,  it  remains  perhaps  the 
completest  product "  of  his  art;  and  it  is  certainly 
the  saddest.  The  note  is  struck  in  the  first  line :  — 

That  night  of  tempest  and  tremendous  gloom, 

when,  — 

Across  the  table,  for  —  it  seemed  to  us  — 
An  age  of  silence,  in  the  dim-lit  room, 
Tenantless  of  all  humans  save  ourselves 
Yet  seeming  haunted,  as  old  taverns  are, 
With  the  spent  mirth  of  unremembered  men, 
He  mused  at  us.  ...  And  then,  "I  know!  ..."  he  said, 
"I  know!  O  Youth!  ...  I  too  have  seen  the  world 
At  sunrise,  candid  as  the  candid  dew; 

.  .  .  You  look  abroad, 
And  see  the  new  adventure  wait  for  you, 


160        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Splendid  with  wars  and  victories;  for  you 
Trust  the  masked  face  of  Destiny.    But  I! 
I've  turned  the  Cosmos  inside  out!  "  he  said; 
And  on  his  lips  the  shadow  of  a  smile 
Looked  hardly  human.  .  .  . 

Some  two  hundred  lines  of  unbroken  disillusion 
ment  follow,  which  should  not  be  torn  to  pieces  to 
make  easy  quotations;  but  the  passages  that  here 
and  there  suggest  autobiography  may  serve  as 
excuse  for  cutting  up  such  a  poem  into  fragments 
which  now  and  then  resemble  the  letters  in  their 
spontaneous  outbursts. 

Yes!  and  I  feel  anew  the  splendid  zest 

Of  youth's  brave  service  in  truth's  ancient  cause, 

When,  with  the  self-same  thunders  that  you  use, 

Edged  with  a  wit  —  at  no  time  Greek!  —  I  too 

Most  pleasurably  assailed  and  tumbled  down, 

With  a  fine  sense  of  conquest  and  release, 

The  poor,  one,  old,  enfeebled,  cheerless  God 

Left  to  us  of  our  much  be-Deitied 

And  more  be-Devilled  past  .  .  . 

And  all's  well  done  I  doubt  not;  though  the  times 

Of  life  may  well  seem  all  too  brief  to  waste! 

But  this  comes  later,  when  we  learn,  —  as  learn 

We  must,  if  we  go  forward  still  from  strength 

To  strength  incessantly,  —  to  wage  no  more 


HERAKLES  161 

With  phantoms  of  the  past  fortunate  wars; 
To  die  no  longer  on  the  barricades 
For  the  true  faith;  to  spend  no  more  the  rich 
And  insufficient  days  and  powers  of  life 
Striving  to  shape  the  world  and  force  the  facts, 
Tame  the  strong  heart,  and  stultify  the  soul, 
To  fit  some  creed,  some  purpose,  some  design 
Ingeniously  contrived  to  spare  the  weak, 
Protect  the  timid  and  delude  the  fools.  — 

The  time  must  come 
When  we  can  deal  in  partialities 
No  more,  if  truth  shall  prosper;  for  we  stand 
Awfully  face  to  face  with  just  the  whole 
Secret,  —  our  unrestricted  Universe, 
Spirit  and  sense!  .  .  .  And  then,  abruptly  then 
Swift  as  a  passion,  brutal  as  a  blow, 
The  dark  shuts  down! 

Whether  he  felt  the  dark  already  shutting  down, 
brutal  as  a  blow,  or  only  divined  it  from  the  fate  of 
Stickney,  one  need  not  know.  The  verses  prove 
that  he  felt  it  personally,  for  he  repeated  it  again 
and  again:  — 

In  the  strict  silence,  while  he  spoke  no  more, 
We  heard  the  tumult  of  our  hearts,  and  feared 
Almost  as  men  fear  death,  and  know  not  why, 
We  feared,  .  .  .  until  at  last,  while  at  the  closed 
Windows  the  wind  cried  like  a  frenzied  soul, 


162        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

He  said:  —  "I  too  have  tried,  of  mortal  life, 
The  daily  brief  excursions;  .  .  . 

and  I  have  felt  the  one 
Utterly  loosed  and  loving  woman's  heart, 
There  where  the  twilight  failed  and  night  came  on, 
Thrill  to  life's  inmost  secret  on  my  breast; 
And  I  have  known  the  whole  of  life  and  been 
The  whole  of  man!  The  Night  is  best!" 

The  letters  will  show  that  the  "Noctambulist" 
was  meant  as  "a  really  new  and  large  and  valid 
departure,"  which,  if  followed  in  its  natural  direc 
tion,  should  have  led  to  dramatic  lyrics  and  prob 
lems  more  or  less  in  the  feeling  of  "Men  and  Wo 
men";  but,  immediately,  the  "Noctambulist" 
abuts  on  "Herakles,"  which  properly  closes  the 
cycle.  In  the  "  Herakles,"  the  poet  exhausted,  once 
for  all,  the  whole  range  of  thought  and  expression 
with  which  his  life  had  begun;  it  was  an  immense 
effort;  and  in  approaching  the  analysis  of  this 
drama,  which,  in  bulk,  is  nearly  equal  to  all  the 
rest  of  the  poet's  writings  together,  and  in  sus 
tained  stress  stands  beyond  comparison  with  them, 
the  critic  or  biographer  is  embarrassed,  like  the 
poet  himself,  by  the  very  magnitude  of  the  scheme. 


HERAKLES  163 

Although  no  reader  can  be  now  safely  supposed 
to  know  anything  of  the  Greek  drama,  he  must  be 
assumed  to  have  an  acquaintance  with  ^Eschylus 
and  Euripides  at  least.  Something  must  be  taken 
for  granted,  even  though  it  be  only  the  bare  agree 
ment  that  Shelley's  "Prometheus  Unbound"  does 
not  interfere  with  "Empedocles  on  Etna"  and 
that  neither  of  these  Greek  revivals  jostles  against 
"  Atalanta  in  Calydon."  Here  are  five  or  six  of  the 
greatest  masterpieces  of  literature  with  which  a 
reader  must  be  supposed  to  be  acquainted ;  and 
perhaps  he  would  do  well  to  keep  in  mind  that,  in 
bulk,  Browning's  "The  Ring  and  the  Book"  is 
large  enough  to  contain  them  all,  and  the  "Hera- 
kles"  too;  while  the  methods  and  merits  of  all  are 
as  distinct  and  personal  as  the  poets. 

The  reader,  too,  who  takes  up  the  "Herakles" 
for  the  first  time,  must  be  supposed  to  know  that 
the  plot  of  the  drama  is  not  of  the  poet's  making: 
it  is  ^given,  —  imposed;  and  the  dramatist  has 
taken  care  to  quote  at  the  outset  the  words  of  the 
historian,  Diodorus,  whose  story  he  meant  to  fol 
low.  Herakles  and  Creon  and  Megara  are  familiar 


164        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

characters  in  history  as  well  as  on  the  stage,  and 
as  real  as  historians  can  make  them.  Herakles 
did  marry  Megara,  the  daughter  of  Creon,  King 
of  Thebes;  he  did  refuse  to  obey  the  orders  of 
Eurystheus,  King  of  Argos;  he  was  actually  —  ac 
cording  to  the  historian  —  seized  with  frenzy,  and 
pierced  his  children  with  arrows;  he  submitted  to 
the  will  of  God,  performed  his  miracles,  freed 
Prometheus,  and  became  immortal.  All  this  is 
fact,  which  the  Greeks  accepted,  as  they  after 
wards  accepted  the  facts  of  the  Christ's  life  and 
death,  his  miracles  and  immortality;  and  for  the 
same  reasons:  for  both  were  Saviors,  Pathfinders, 
and  Sacrifices. 

Lodge  took  up  this  dramatic  motive,  —  the 
greatest  in  human  experience,  —  as  it  was  given 
him;  and  so  the  reader  must  take  it,  —  or  leave  it, 
—  since  he  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  argument  of 
the  play  once  he  has  accepted  it.  His  interest  is  in 
the  dramatic  development  of  the  action,  and  the 
philosophic  development  of  the  thought.  As  for 
the  thought,  something  has  already  been  said;  but 
the  reader  must  be  assumed  to  know  that  it  is  the 


HERAKLES  165 

oldest  thought  that  seems  to  have  been  known 
to  the  human  mind,  and,  in  the  Christian  religion, 
is  the  substantial  fact  which  every  Catholic  sees 
realized  before  his  eyes  whenever  he  goes  to  mass. 
The  God  who  sacrifices  himself  is  one  with  the  vic 
tim.  The  reader  who  does  not  already  know  this 
general  law  of  religion  which  confounds  all  the  dif 
ferent  elements  that  enter  into  ordinary  sacrifice, 
can  know  neither  poetry  nor  religion.  Christ  car 
ries  the  whole  of  humanity  in  his  person.  The 
identification  of  subject  and  object,  of  thought 
and  matter,  of  will  and  universe,  is  a  part  of  the 
alphabet  of  philosophy.  The  conception  of  a  God 
sacrificing  himself  for  a  world  of  which  he  is  him 
self  a  part,  may  be  a  mystery,  —  a  confusion  of 
ideas,  —  a  contradiction  of  terms,  —  but  it  has 
been  the  most  familiar  and  the  highest  expression 
of  the  highest  —  and  perhaps  also  of  the  lowest 
—  civilizations. 

The  reader's  whole  concern  lies  therefore  not  in 
the  poem's  motive  but  in  its  action,  —  the  stages 
of  its  movement,  —  the  skill  and  power  with  which 
the  theme  is  developed,  —  the  copiousness  of  the 


166  GEORGE   CABOT  LODGE 

poet's  resources, — the  art  and  scope  of  his  pre 
sentation.  The  critic  can  do  no  more  than  sketch 
an  outline  of  the  difficulties;  he  cannot  attempt  to 
discuss  the  solutions.  Scholars  seem  inclined  to 
think  that  Euripides  himself  failed  in  his  treat 
ment  of  this  theme;  that  JSschylus  scarcely  rose 
quite  to  its  level;  and  that  Shelley  used  it  chiefly  as 
a  field  on  which  to  embroider  beauties  wholly  his 
own.  Where  three  of  the  greatest  poets  that  ever 
lived  have  found  their  highest  powers  taxed  to  the 
utmost,  a  critic  can  afford  to  keep  silence. 

The  play  opens  at  Thebes  in  the  empty  agora, 
at  sunset,  by  a  dialogue  between  the  eternal  poet 
and  the  eternal  woman,  who  serve  here  in  the  place 
of  the  Greek  chorus,  each  seeking,  after  the  way  of 
poet  or  woman,  for  something,  —  the  light,  —  and 
so  introducing  the  action,  which  begins  abruptly 
by  a  feast  in  the  palace  of  Creon,  the  king,  who  has 
called  his  people  together  to  witness  his  abdication 
in  favor  of  his  son-in-law,  Herakles. 

Creon  is  a  new  creation  in  Lodge's  poetry,  —  a 
deliberate  effort  at  character-drawing  till  now  un- 
attempted.  Creon  is  the  man-of-the-world,  the 


HERAKLES  167 

administrator,  the  humorist  and  sage,  who  has 
accepted  all  the  phases  of  life,  and  has  reached  the 
end,  which  he  also  accepts,  whether  as  a  fact  or 
a  phantasm,  —  whatever  the  world  will,  —  but 
which  has  no  more  value  to  him  than  as  being  the 
end,  neither  comprehended  nor  comprehensible, 
but  human.  Perhaps  it  is  only  a  coincidence  that 
^Eschylus  vaguely  suggested  such  a  critic  in 
Okeanos,  who  appears  early  in  the  "Prometheus." 
Creon  speaks,  "in  an  even,  clear,  quiet  voice":  — 
£  I  am  your  King;  and  I  am  old,  —  and  wise. 

And  I  can  now  afford  your  censure!  Yes, 
I  can  afford  at  last  expensive  things 
Which  cost  a  man  the  kingdoms  of  the  world, 
And  all  their  glory!  I  have  lived  my  life; 
—  You  cannot  bribe  me  now  by  any  threat 
Of  ruin  to  my  life's  high  edifice, 
Or  any  dazzled  prospect  of  ambition.  .  .  . 
I  think  despite  these  sceptical  strange  words, 
You  will  respect  me,  —  for  I  am  your  King, 
And  I  have  proved  myself  among  you  all 
An  architect.  Therefore  you  will  not  say, 
"This  is  the  voice  of  failure!"  -  -  Yet  I  know 
That  you  will  find  some  other  things  to  say 
Not  half  so  true!  For,  when  a  man  is  old, 


168        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

He  knows  at  least  how  utterly  himself 

Has  failed!  But  say  what  things  of  me  you  will 

And  be  assured  I  sympathize!  Indeed, 

A  voice  like  mine  is  no- wise  terrible, 

As  might  be  the  tremendous  voice  of  truth 

Should  it  find  speech  that  you  could  understand. 

Yet  it  may  vex  and  dreadfully  distress 

Reflective  men,  —  if  such  indeed  there  be 

Among  you  all,  —  and  therefore  be  assured, 

I  sympathize! 

With  that,  Creon  names  Herakles  as  his  suc 
cessor,  and  the  crowd  departs,  leaving  the  family 
surrounding  Herakles  and  congratulating  him, 
until  Herakles,  breaking  away,  turns  fiercely  on  the 
king  with  passionate  reproaches  for  sacrificing  him 
to  selfish  politics :  — 

Is  this  your  wisdom,  Sire?  and  is  it  wise. 
Lightly,  and  thus  with  calm  complacency, 
Now  to  believe  that  I,  that  Herakles 
Should  hold  himself  so  cheaply  as  your  price? 

The  unshaped,  mystical  consciousness  of  a  des 
tiny  to  become  the  Savior,  not  the  Servant,  —  the 
creator,  not  the  economist,  —  the  source  itself,  not 
the  conduit  for  "these  safe  human  mediocrities," 
—  forces  Herakles  to  reject  the  crown.  He  will  be 


HERAKLES  169 

fettered  by  none  of  these  ties  to  common,  casual 
supremacies:  — 

Sire,  I  will  not  serve  the  Gods  or  you! 
Sire,  I  will  not  rule  by  grace  of  God 
Or  by  your  grace!  I  will  be  Lord  of  none, 
And  thus  unto  myself  be  Lord  and  Law! 

Therewith  the  inexorable,  tragic  succession  of 
sacrifices,  insanities,  begins.  The  dramatist  fol 
lows  up  each  step  in  the  rising  intensities  of  the 
theme,  with  almost  as  much  care  as  though  he  were 
a  professional  alienist.  He  builds  his  climax  from 
the  ground,  —  that  is  to  say,  from  the  family, 
which  is  always  the  first  sacrifice  in  these  mystical 
ideals  of  the  Savior.  The  first  of  the  scenes  is  laid 
at  night  before  the  house  of  Herakles,  who  listens 
to  Megara  within,  singing  her  children  to  sleep :  — 

My  children  sleep,  whose  lives  fulfil 

The  soul's  tranquillity  and  trust; 

While  clothed  in  life's  immortal  dust 
The  patient  earth  lies  dark'and  still. 

All  night  they  lie  against  my  breast 
And  sleep,  whose  dream  of  life  begins; 
Before  the  time  of  strife  and  sins, 

Of  tears  and  truth,  they  take  their  rest. 


170  GEORGE   CABOT  LODGE 

The  next  scene  is  laid  before  a  tavern  door,  at 
dawn,  where  Herakles,  in  his  sleepless  wandering, 
stops  to  listen  to  the  men  and  women  carousing 
within.  The  poet  is  heard  singing:  — 

I  know  not  what  it  is  appears 
To  us  so  worth  the  tragic  task:  — 
I  know  beneath  his  ribald  masque 

Man's  sightless  face  is  grey  with  tears!  • 

This  tavern  scene,  to  readers  who  know  their 
drama  of  sacrifice  and  redemption,  "is  grey  with 
tears";  and  the  more  because,  true  to  tradition,  it 
is  the  woman  who  first  recognizes  the  Savior,  and 
putting  an  end  to  his  anguish  of  doubt  and  self- 
distrust,  draws  him  on  to  his  fated  duty  of  self- 
immolation.  The  messenger  from  Eurystheus  ar 
rives,  while  Herakles  is  parting  from  his  wife  and 
children,  bringing  the  order  to  submit  to  the  King 
of  Argos  and  the  gods,  to  perform  the  imposed 
labors,  and  to  remain  a  subject  man;  but  the  ac 
tion  of  the  drama  is  interrupted  here  by  a  discus 
sion  between  Creon  and  the  poet,  of  the  drama 
itself,  —  the  dilemma  of  Herakles,  —  a  discussion 
which  is,  in  a  way,  more  dramatic  than  the  drama 


HERAKLES  171 

because  it  broadens  the  interest  to  embrace  hu 
manity  altogether.  Like  the  chorus  of  Okeanids 
in  ^Eschylus,  Creon  sees  the  hero,  and  admires 
him,  but  doubts  what  good  will  come  of  him  to 
man.  He  lays  down  the  law,  as  a  King  and  a  Judge 
must:  — 

Crowds  are  but  numbers;  and  at  last  I  see 
There  are  not  merely  players  of  the  game; 
There  is  not,  high  or  low,  only  the  one 
Sensible  and  substantial  prize,  to  which 
The  fiat  of  the  world  gives  currency, 
And  which,  in  various  ways,  is  always  won! 
There  is,  besides,  the  one,  estranged,  rare  man, 
Whose  light  of  life  is  splendid  in  the  soul, 
Burns  with  a  kind  of  glory  in  his  strength, 
And  gives  such  special  grandeur  to  ambition 
That  he  will  make  no  terms  with  fortune.  .  .  . 

Creon's  reply  to  this  "estranged,  rare  man,"  is 
that  "  all  men  living  are  not  ever  free,"  and  that,  if 
not  pliant,  they  are  broken.  In  a  dozen  lines,  as 
terse  as  those  of  ^Eschylus,  he  sums  up  the  law  of 
life:- 

Life,  like  a  candle  in  a  starless  night, 

Brightens  and  burns,  or  flutters  and  is  spent, 

As  man's  wise  weakness  spares  the  guarded  flame, 


172        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Or  man's  rash  strength  resolves  in  all  despite 
To  lift  his  torch  into  the  spacious  winds, 
To  blaze  his  path  across  the  darknesses, 
And  force  the  elements  to  his  own  undoing  .  .  . 
Only  the  strong  go  forward  —  and  are  slain! 
Only  the  strong,  defenceless,  dare  —  and  die! 
Only  the  strong,  free,  fain  and  fearless  —  fail! 
Remember  this!  lest  a  worse  thing  than  mere 
Passion  and  ecstasy  of  poems  befall  you! 

"Listen  to  me,"  says  Mercury  to  Prometheus, 
at  the  close  of  the  same  dispute  in  ^Eschylus; 
"When  misfortune  overwhelms  you,  do  not  accuse 
fate;  do  not  upbraid  Zeus  for  striking  you  an  unfair 
blow!  Accuse  no  one  but  yourself!  You  know  what 
threatens  you!  No  surprise!  No  artifice!  Your 
own  folly  alone  entangles  you  in  these  meshes  of 
misery  which  never  release  their  prey."  Creon,  as 
a  wise  judge,  was  bound  to  repeat  this  warning, 
and  the  Poet  —  in  the  poem  —  makes  but  an  un 
convincing  answer  to  it,  —  in  fact,  loses  his  tem 
per  altogether,  until  both  parties  end,  as  usual,  by 
becoming  abusive,  in  spite  of  Creon's  self-control. 

The  action  of  the  play  repeats  the  motive  of  the 
dialogue.  Herakles  is  exasperated  by  the  insolence 


HERAKLES  173 

of  the  messenger,  to  the  point  of  striking  him,  and 
threatening  to  destroy  his  master.  Then,  over 
whelmed  by  the  mortification  of  having  yielded  to 
a  degraded  human  passion,  and  of  having  sunk  to 
the  level  of  the  servitude  against  which  he  had  re 
belled,  he  sets  out,  in  fury  and  despair,  to  chal 
lenge  the  oracle  of  the  God  at  Delphi. 

The  scene  in  the  temple  of  Apollo  at  Delphi 
follows,  where  Herakles  drags  the  Pythia  from  her 
shrine,  and  finds  himself  suddenly  saluted  as  the 
God. 

THE   PYTHIA 

Yours  is  the  resurrection  and  the  life! 


I  am  the  God! 

THE    PYTHIA 

There  is  no  God  but  I! 

I  am  whatever  is! 

I  am  despair  and  hope  and  love  and  hate, 

Freedom  and  fate, 

Life's  plangent  cry,  Death's  stagnant  silences! 

I  am  the  earth  and  sea  and  sky, 

The  race,  the  runner  and  the  goal;  — 

There  is  no  thought  nor  thing  but  IlJ  ' 


174        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

To  the  ecstasy  of  the  Pythia,  the  chorus  re 
sponds  in  the  deepest  tones  of  despair:  — 

Have  we  not  learned  in  bitterness  to  know 
It  matters  nothing  what  we  deem  or  do, 
Whether  we  find  the  false  or  seek  the  true, 
The  profit  of  our  lives  is  vain  and  small  ? 
Have  we  not  found,  whatever  price  is  paid, 
Man  is  forever  cheated  and  betrayed  ? 
So  shall  the  soul  at  last  be  cheated  after  all! 

"Coward  and  weak  and  abject,"  is  the  rejoinder 
of  Herakles,  who  rises  at  last  to  the  full  conscious 
ness  of  his  divine  mission  and  of  the  price  he  must 
pay  for  it:  — 

,  I  am  resolved!  And  I  will  stand  apart, 
Naked  and  perfect  in  my  solitude 
Aloft  in  the  clear  light  perpetually, 
Having  afforded  to  the  uttermost 
The  blood-stained,  tear-drenched  ransom  of  the  soul! 
Having  by  sacrifice,  by  sacrifice 
Severed  his  bondage  and  redeemed  the  God! 
The  God  I  am  indeed!  For  man  is  slain, 
And  in  his  death  is  God  illustrious 
And  lives! 

Then  follows  the  Tenth  Scene,  the  killing  of  the 
children.  On  this,  the  poet  has  naturally  thrown  his 


HERAKLES  175 

greatest  effort,  and  his  rank  and  standing  as  a 
dramatist  must  finally  rest  on  it.  The  reader  had 
best  read  it  for  himself;  it  is  hardly  suited  to  ex 
tracts  or  criticism;  but  perhaps,  for  his  own  con 
venience,  he  had  better  read  first  the  same  scene 
as  Euripides  rendered  it.  This  is  one  of  the  rare 
moments  of  the  dramatic  art  where  more  depends 
on  the  audience  than  on  the  poet,  for  the  violence 
of  the  dramatic  motive  —  the  Sacrifice  —  carries 
the  action  to  a  climax  beyond  expression  in  words. 
The  ordinary  reader  shrinks  from  it;  the  tension  of 
the  Greek  drama  overstrains  him;  he  is  shocked  at 
the  sight  of  an  insane  man  killing  his  children  with 
arrows,  and  refuses  to  forgive  the  dramatist  for 
putting  such  a  sight  before  him.  Insanity  has  al 
ways  been  the  most  violent  of  tragic  motives,  and 
the  insanity  of  Herakles  surpassed  all  other  insan 
ities,  as  the  Crucifixion  of  Christ  surpassed  all  other 
crucifixions.  Naturally,  the  person  who  objects  to 
the  Crucifixion  as  a  donnee  of  the  drama,  is  quite 
right  in  staying  away  from  Ober-Ammergau;  but 
if  he  goes  to  Ober-Ammergau,  he  must  at  least 
try  to  understand  what  the  drama  means  to  the 


176        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

audience,  which  feels  —  or  should  feel  —  itself  en- 
globed  and  incarnated  in  it.  The  better-informed 
and  the  more  accomplished  the  critic  may  be, 
who  reads  the  "Herakles"  for  the  first  time, 
knowing  nothing  of  the  author,  the  more  discon 
certed  he  is  likely  to  be  in  reading  it  a  second 
time.  His  first  doubts  of  the  poet's  knowledge  or 
merits  will  be  followed  by  doubts  of  his  own. 

In  one  respect  at  least,  as  a  question  of  dramatic 
construction,  the  doubt  is  well  founded.  Critics 
object  to  the  "Herakles"  of  Euripides  that  it  con 
sists  of  two  separate  dramas.  The  same  objection 
applies  to  the  myth  itself.  The  Savior  —  whether 
Greek,  or  Christian,  or  Buddhist  —  always  repre 
sents  two  distinct  motives  —  the  dramatic  and 
the  philosophic.  The  dramatic  climax  in  the 
Christian  version  is  reached  in  the  Crucifixion;  the 
philosophic  climax,  in  the  Resurrection  and  Ascen 
sion;  but  the  same  personal  ties  connect  the  whole 
action,  and  give  it  unity.  This  is  not  the  case  either 
with  Herakles  or  Buddha.  The  climax  of  the  Greek 
version  is  reached  in  the  killing  of  the  children,  so 
far  as  the  climax  is  dramatic;  while  the  philoso- 


HERAKLES  177 

phic  climax  —  the  attainment  —  is  proved  by  the 
freeing  of  Prometheus;  and  these  two  donnees  are 
dramatically  wide  apart,  —  in  fact,  totally  uncon 
nected.  Critics  are  Creons,  and  object  to  being 
tossed  from  one  motive  to  another,  with  an  im 
patient  sense  of  wrong.  As  drama,  one  idea  was 
capable  of  treatment;  the  other  was  not. 

Probably,  the  ordinary  reader  might  find  an  ad 
vantage  in  reading  the  Twelfth  Scene  of  "Hera- 
kles,"  —  the  Prometheus,  —  as  a  separate  poem. 
After  the  violent  action  of  killing  the  children,  the 
freeing  of  Prometheus  seems  cold  and  uncon 
vincing;  much  less  dramatic  than  the  raising  of 
Lazarus  or  even  the  Ascension.  The  Greek  solu 
tion  of  this  difficulty  seems  to  be  known  only 
through  fragments  of  the  lost  "Prometheus  Un 
bound"  of  ^Eschylus,  which  are  attached  to  most 
good  editions  of  the  poet.  Lodge's  solution  is  the 
necessary  outcome  of  his  philosophy,  and  is  worth 
noting,  if  for  no  other  reason,  because  it  is  per 
sonal  to  him,  —  or,  more  exactly,  to  his  Oriental 
and  Schopenhauer  idealism.  Possibly  —  perhaps 
one  might  almost  say  probably  —  it  is  —  both  as 


178'  GEORGE   CABOT  LODGE 

logic  and  as  history  —  the  more  correct  solution; 
but  on  that  point,  historians  and  metaphysicians 
are  the  proper  sources  of  authority.  Literature  has 
no  right  to  interfere,  least  of  all  to  decide  a  ques 
tion  disputed  since  the  origin  of  thought. 

The  "Prometheus  Unbound"  — the  Twelfth 
Scene  of  "  Herakles"  —  opens,  then,  upon  the  At 
tainment.  Herakles  has,  by  self-sacrifice,  made 
himself  —  and  the  whole  of  humanity  within  him 
— one  with  the  infinite  Will  which  causes  and  main 
tains  the  universe.  He  has  submitted  to  God  by 
merging  himself  in  God;  he  has,  by  his  so-called 
labors,  or  miracles,  raised  humanity  to  the  divine 
level. '  ^Eschylus  puts  in  the  mouth  of  Prometheus 
the  claim  to  have  freed  man  from  the  terrors  of 
death  and  inspired  him  with  blind  hopes:  "And 
a  precious  gift  it  is  that  you  have  given  them," 
responds  the  chorus!  Lodge  puts  the  claim  into 
the  mouth  of  Herakles,  and  with  it  his  own  deifica 
tion:  — 

Not  in  vain,  out  of  the  night  of  Hell, 

I  drew  the  Hound  of  Hell,  the  ravening  Death, 

Into  the  light  of  life,  and  held  him  forth 


HERAKLES  179 

Where  the  soul's  Sun  shed  lightnings  in  his  eyes, 
And  he  was  like  a  thing  of  little  meaning, 
Powerless  and  vain  and  nowise  terrible.  — 
While  with  my  inmost  heart  I  laughed  aloud 
Into  the  blind  and  vacant  face  of  Death, 
And  cast  him  from  me,  so  he  fled  away 
Screaming  into  the  darkness  whence  he  came! 
Nothing  is  vain  of  all  that  I  have  done! 
I  have  prevailed  by  labors,  and  subdued 
All  that  man  is  below  his  utmost  truth, 
His  inmost  virtue,  his  essential  strength, 
His  soul's  transcendent,  one  pre-eminence! 
Yea,  I  have  brought  into  the  soul's  dominion 
All  that  I  am!  —  and  in  the  Master's  House 
There  is  no  strength  of  all  my  mortal  being 
That  does  not  serve  him  now;  there  is  no  aim, 
There  is  no  secret  which  He  does  not  know; 
There  is  no  will  save  one,  which  is  the  Lord's! 

The  Church  had  said  the  same  thing  from  the 
beginning;  and  the  Greek,  or  Oriental,  or  German 
philosophy  changed  the  idea  only  in  order  to 
merge  the  universe  in  man  instead  of  merging  man 
in  the  universe.  The  Man  attained,  not  by  ab 
sorption  of  himself  in  the  infinite,  but  by  absorb 
ing  the  infinite  and  finite  together,  in  himself,  as 
his  own  Thought,  —  his  Will,  — 


180        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

Giving  to  phases  of  the  senseless  flux. 
One  after  one,  the  soul's  identity; 

so  that  the  philosophic  climax  of  the  "  Prometheus 
Unbound"  suddenly  developed  itself  as  a  Prome 
theus  bound  in  fetters  only  forged  by  himself; 
fetters  of  his  own  creation  which  never  existed 
outside  his  own  thought;  and  which  fell  from  his 
limbs  at  once  when  he  attained  the  force  to  will  it. 
Prometheus  is  as  much  astonished  at  his  own 
energy  as  though  he  were  Creon,  and,  in  a  dazed 
and  helpless  way,  asks  what  he  is  to  do  with  it:  — 

I  stand  in  the  beginning,  stand  and  weep. 
Here  in  the  new,  bleak  light  of  liberty  .  .  . 
And  who  am  I,  and  what  is  liberty? 

The  answer  to  this  question  is  that  liberty,  in 
itself,  is  the  end,  —  the  sufficient  purpose  of  the 
will.  This  simple  abstract  of  the  simple  thought  is 
the  theme  of  the  last  speech  of  Herakles  on  the 
last  page  of  the  drama:  — 

When  the  long  life  of  all  men's  endless  lives,  • 
Its  gradual  pregnancies,  its  pangs  and  throes, 
Its  countless  multitudes  of  perished  Gods 
And  outworn  forms  and  spent  humanities,  — 


HERAKLES  181 

When  all  the  cosmic  process  of  the  past 

Stands  in  the  immediate  compass  of  our  minds; 

When  all  is  present  to  us,  and  all  is  known, 

Even  to  the  least,  even  to  the  uttermost, 

Even  to  the  first  and  last,  —  when,  over  all, 

The  widening  circles  of  our  thought  expand 

To  infinite  horizons  everywhere,  — 

Then,  tenoned  in  our  foothold  on  the  still. 

Supernal,  central  pinnacle  of  being, 

Shall  we  not  look  abroad  and  look*within, 

Over  the  total  Universe,  the  vast, 

Complex  and  vital  sum  of  force  and  form 

And  say  in  one,  sufficient  utterance, 

The  single,  whole,  transcendent  Truth,  —  "I  am!'* 

Not  only  philosophers,  but  also,  and  particu 
larly,  society  itself,  for  many  thousands  of  years, 
have  waged  bloody  wars  over  these  two  solutions  of 
the  problem,  as  Prometheus  and  Herakles,  Buddha 
and  Christ,  struggled  with  them  in  turn:  but 
while  neither  solution  has  ever  been  universally 
accepted  as  convincing,  that  of  Herakles  has  at 
least  the  advantage  of  being  as  old  as  the  oldest, 
and  as  new  as  the  newest  philosophy,  —  as  fa 
miliar  as  the  drama  of  the  Savior  in  all  his  innu 
merable  forms,  —  as  dramatic  as  it  is  familiar,  — 


182        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

as  poetic  as  it  is  dramatic,  —  and  as  simple  as  sac 
rifice.  Paradox  for  paradox,  the  only  alternative 
—  Creon's  human  solution  —  is  on  the  whole 
rather  more  paradoxical,  and  certainly  less  logical, 
than  the  superhuman  solution  of  Herakles. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE   END 

THIS  is  the  whole  story!  What  other  efforts 
Lodge  might  have  made,  if  he  had  lived  into  an 
other  phase  of  life,  the  effort  he  had  made  in  this 
first  phase  was  fatal  and  final.  He  rebelled  against 
admitting  it,  —  refused  to  see  it,  —  yet  was  con 
scious  that  something  hung  over  him  which  would 
have  some  tragic  end.  Possibly  the  encourage 
ment  of  great  literary  success  might  have  helped 
and  stimulated  the  action  of  the  heart,  but  he 
steeled  himself  against  the  illusion  of  success,  and 
bore  with  apparent  and  outward  indifference  the 
total  indifference  of  the  public.  As  early  as  Sep 
tember  30,  1907,  he  wrote  to  Marjorie  Nott:  "I 
am,  for  one  thing,  —  and  to  open  a  subject  too 
vast  to  be  even  properly  hinted  at  here,  —  draw 
ing  to  the  close  of  the  immense  piece  of  work  which 
has  held  and  compelled  me  for  a  year  past.  The 
end  looms  large  in  my  prospect  and  I  am  doing  my 


184        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

best,  —  as  you  shall  one  day  see.  You,  in  fact,  will 
be  one  of  only  a  half-dozen,  at  best,  who  will  see  it. 
Which  is,  I  imagine,  all  to  my  credit;  and  certainly 
as  much  as  I  reasonably  want.  What  I  have 
learned  in  the  last  year,  through  the  work  and  the 
days,  I  shall  never  live  to  express;  which  is,  I  take 
it,  illustrative  —  as  so  much  else  is  —  of  the  radi 
cal  inferiority  of  writing  your  truth  instead  of 
being  and  living  it, — namely  that  by  writing  you 
can  never,  at  all,  keep  abreast  of  it,  but  inevitably 
fall  more  and  more  behind  as  your  pace  betters. 
So  I  shall  eventually  perish  having  consciously 
failed,  with  (like  Esme)  *  all  my  epigrams  in  me.' 
I  wonder  if  Jesus  consciously  failed;  I  don't  mean, 
of  course,  his  total,  obvious,  practical  failure, 
which  the  world  for  so  long  has  so  loudly  recorded 
in  blood  and  misery  and  ruin;  I  mean,  did  he  have 
that  consciousness  of  personal,  solitary  failure, 
which  one  can  hardly,  with  one's  utmost  imagina 
tion,  dissociate  from  the  religious  being  of  the  soul 
of  man?  I  believe  he  did,  —  though  perhaps  his 
mind  was  too  simple  and  single,  —  as,  to  some 
extent,  apparently,  was  the  mind  of  Socrates.  I 


THE  END  185 

sometimes  think  that  the  peasant  of  genius  is, 
perhaps,  more  outside  our  comprehension  than 
any  other  type  of  man.  I  perceive  that  I  moon, 
vaguely  moon,  —  and  I  shall  soon  be  boring 
you." 

In  June,  1908,  he  went  abroad  with  his  mother 
and  father,  for  change  and  rest,  but  his  letters 
show  a  growing  sense  of  fatigue  and  effort.  To  his 
wife  he  wrote  from  the  steamer,  before  landing  in 
England :  — 

"Our  own  voyage  has  come  so  warmly,  so  beau 
tifully,  back  to  me  in  these  tranquil  sea-days,  our 
own  so  clear  and  fine  and  high  adventure  into 
strange  new  ways,  our  great  adventure  which  is 
still  in  the  making.  It  seems  to  me,  that  gay  glad 
beginning,  so  alone  and  so  one  as  we  were,  as 
something,  now,  inexpressibly  candid  and  lovely, 
and  humanly  brave.  And  since  then,  how  much, 
how  really  much  of  our  young,  our  confident  and 
defiant  boast,  —  flung,  at  that  time,  so  happily, 
and  so,  after  all,  grandly,  at  large,  —  has  been 
proved  and  greatened  and  amplified!" 

From  London,  in  July:   "London  has  given 


186        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

me  a  new  sense  of  itself,  a  flavor  of  romance  and 
adventure,  and  the  pervading  sense  of  a  great, 
dingy  charm.  Yes!  it's  all  been  quite  new  to  me, 
and  wonderfully  pleasant;  which  just  satisfac 
torily  means,  I  surmise,  that  I  come  all  new  to  it, 

—  unimpeded   by   unimportant   prejudices,   and 
prepared  vastly  more  than  I  was,  for  life  in  all  its 
varieties  and  interests." 

Later,  from  Paris:  "I've  lunched  and  dined 
everywhere;  I've  been  to  what  theatre  there  is,  and 
chiefly  I've  drifted  about  the  streets.  And  I  find 
essentially  that  I  seem  to  demand  much  more  of 
life  than  I  ever  did,  and  in  consequence  take  it  all 
here  with  a  less  perfect  gayety  and  a  more  intense 
reflection.  I  feel  matured  to  an  incredible  degree, 

—  as  if  I  did  now  quite  know  the  whole  of  life;  and 
when  one  's  matured,  really  matured,  there  is,  I 
imagine,  not  much  ahead  except  work.  So,  back  to 
you  and  to  work  I'm  coming  soon." 

In  August,  again  from  Paris:  "This  whole 
Paris  experience  has  been  queer  and  wonderful. 
Joe  and  you  have  been  with  me  in  all  the  familiar 
streets  and  places,  and  my  youth  has  appeared  to 


THE  END  187 

me  in  colors  richer  and  more  comprehensible  than 
ever  before.  .  .  .  >! 

He  came  home,  and  brought  out  "Herakles"  in 
November.  In  reply  to  a  letter  of  congratulation 
from  Marjorie  Nott,  he  wrote  to  her,  on  December 
17:  "Thank  you!  You  know  that  I  write  for  my 
self,  of  course,  and  then,  as  things  are  in  fact,  just 
for  you  and  so  few  others.  Which  is  enough !  and 
sees  me,  so  to  speak,  admirably  through.  Well! 
I  'm  glad  you  like  it,  and  if  you  ever  have  anything 
more  to  say  of  it,  you  know,  my  dear,  that  I  want 
to  hear  it.  You  '11  find  it,  of  course,  long;  and  you '11 
strike,  I  guess,  sandy  places.  Perhaps,  though, 
there  are  some  secrets  in  it,  and  some  liberties. . . ." 

Six  months  afterwards  he  took  up  the  theme 
again,  in  the  last  few  days  of  his  life,  making 
Marjorie  Nott  his  confidant,  as  he  had  done  since 
childhood. 

He  wrote  from  Nahant  July  31,  1909:- 

"  Before  all  else  I  must  thank  you,  my  dear,  for 
the  grave  and  deep  emotions  roused  within  me  by 
your  letter  with  its  fine,  clear  note  of  serious  trust 
and  loving  favor  towards  me.  Than  just  that,  there 


188        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

is  n't  for  me  anything  better  to  be  had.  I  derive 
from  it  precisely  the  intimate  encouragement 
which  one  so  perpetually  wants  and  so  exception 
ally  gets.  Moreover,  in  all  your  letter  I  don't  find 
a  word  with  which  I  can  possibly  disagree.  It  oc 
curs  to  me  that  there  may  have  been,  in  my  pages 
to  you,  some  note  of  complaint,  which,  in  sober 
truth,  I  did  n't  intend  and  don't  feel.  Every  man 
of  us  has  the  Gods  to  complain  of;  every  man  of  us, 
sooner  or  later,  in  some  shape,  experiences  the 
tragedy  of  life.  But  that,  too  obviously,  is  nothing 
to  cry  about,  for  the  tragedy  of  life  is  one  thing,  and 
my  tragedy  or  yours,  his  or  hers,  is  another.  All  of 
us  must  suffer  in  the  general  human  fate,  and  some 
must  suffer  of  private  wrongs.  I've  none  such  to 
complain  of.  At  all  events,  I  don't,  as  I  said  be 
fore,  disagree  with  a  word  of  your  letter,  but  I  do, 
my  dear,  find  it  dreadfully  vague.  You  surely 
can't  doubt  that  I  deeply  realize  the  value  of 
human  communion  of  any  sort;  but  that  does  n't 
take  me  far  toward  getting  it.  As  I  understand 
your  letter  it  says  to  me:  'Well!  you  might  get 
more  and  better  if  you  tried  more  and  better!' 


THE  END  189 

Perhaps !  at  any  rate,  goodness  knows  I  do  try  — 
and  more  and  more  —  as  best  I  can.  And  surely  I 
don't  complain  of  the  solitude,  which  has,  of  course, 
its  high  value;  but  I  do,  inevitably,  well  know  it's 
there.  I  '11  spare  you  more." 

His  letters  to  Langdon  Mitchell  expressed  the 
same  ideas,  with  such  slight  difference  of  form  as 
one  naturally  uses  in  writing  to  a  man  rather  than 
to  a  woman :  — 

TO    LANGDON    MITCHELL 

WASHINGTON  (Spring,  1906). 

Thank  you,  my  dear  Langdon,  for  your  kind  and 
so  welcome  letters.  I  want  to  thank  you  for  your 
generous  offer  of  help  should  I  try  my  hand  at  a 
play.  .  .  . 

I  should  have  but  one  personal  advantage  in 
writing  a  play,  namely  a  genuine  indifference  as  to 
its  being  played  or  being  successful  if  played.  I  call 
this  an  advantage  because  it  eliminates  the  possi 
bility  of  my  mind  being  disturbed  and  my  powers 
consequently  impaired  by  any  influences  external 
to  myself.  I  become  so  increasingly  convinced  that 
precisely  as  perfection  of  being  consists  in  a  per- 


190  GEORGE   CABOT  LODGE 

fectly  transparent  reality,  so  artistic  perfection 
depends  upon  the  degree  to  which  the  artist  speaks 
his  own  words  in  his  own  voice  and  is  unhampered 
by  the  vocabulary  of  convention  and  the  mega 
phone  of  oratory  —  which  exists  and  could  exist 
only  on  the  theory  of  an  omnipresent  multitude. 
Let  any  man  speak  his  own  word  and  he  is  as 
original  as  Shakespeare  and  as  permanently  in 
teresting  as  Plato.  The  whole  core  of  the  struggle, 
for  ourselves  and  for  art,  is  to  emerge  from  the 
envelope  of  thoughts  and  words  and  deeds  which 
are  not  our  own,  but  the  laws  and  conventions 
and  traditions  formed  of  a  kind  of  composite  of 
other  men's  ideas  and  emotions  and  prejudices. 
Excuse  this  dissertation !  .  .  . 

Your  first  letter  interested  me  profoundly,  for 
my  winter  has  been  curiously  similar  to  yours  as 
you  describe  it.  I  have  had  very  poignantly  the 
same  sense  of  growth,  of  a  revelation  and  of  a  con 
sequent  observable  process  of  maturity.  When 
shall  we  meet  and  make  some  exchange  of 
thoughts?  It  seems  absurd  that  so  great  a  ma 
jority  of  my  life  should  be  spent  without  you . 


THE  END  191 

I  Ve  been  asked  (peals  of  Homeric  and  scornful 
laughter  from  Mitchell)  to  deliver  the  poem  at  the 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  in  Cambridge  this  spring  —  June. 
(Mitchell  chokes  with  mirth  and  shows  symptoms 
of  strangulation.  Is  patted  on  the  back  and  re 
covers.  Lodge  then  good-naturedly  continues:) 
You  observe  how  low  I ' ve  sunk  and  for  a  punish 
ment  for  your  superior  sneers  I  'm  going  to  send 
you  my  poem  for  the  occasion  to  read  and  criti 
cise.  (Mitchell  sourly  admits  that  the  joke  is  not 
entirely  on  Lodge.)  I  shall  send  it  soon,  in  fact  it 
may  arrive  any  day.  So  I  hope  that  your  condi 
tion  of  health  is  improved. 

WASHINGTON,  2346  MASSACHUSETTS  AVE. 
(Winter,  1908). 

MY  DEAR,  DEAR  LANGDON,  —  I  shall  never  have 
words  and  ways  enough  to  thank  you  for  your 
letter.  What  it  meant,  what  it  means  to  me  —  the 
encouragement,  the  life,  the  hope  —  and  above 
all  the  high  felicities  of  friendship  —  all  these 
things  and  other  and  more  things,  which  you,  my 
dear  friend,  of  your  abundance  so  liberally  afford, 


192        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

have  enriched  and  fortified  me  beyond  expres 
sion.  .  .  . 

My  Herakles  is  done  to  the  last  three  scenes  and 
hastens  somewhat  to  its  end.  I  won't  write  you 
about  it,  for  there  is  too  much  to  say  and  finally 
you  '11  have  to  read  it  —  however  much  it 's  long 
and  dull. 

It's  too,  too  bad  you  should  have  been  having 
such  a  devil's  time  with  this  world.  But,  good 
heavens,  I  know  what  it  is  to  wait;  how  intolerable 
it  may  become  sometimes  just  holding  on.  But 
the  muscles  of  patience  and  that  true  daily  cour 
age  which  patience  implies  are  fine  muscles  to  have 
well  developed  even  at  some  cost  —  is  n't  this  so, 
dear  man?  The  living  bread  and  the  consecrated 
wine  must  be  earned  and  eaten  day  by  day  and 
day  by  day;  we  are  not  made  free  of  perfection  by 
any  sudden  moment's  violence  of  virtue;  the  key 
of  the  gate  of  Paradise  is  not  purchased  in  any 
single  payment  however  heavy;  the  travail  of  God's 
nativity  within  us  is  gradual  and  slow  and  labori 
ous.  It  is  the  sustained  courage,  the  long  stern 
patience,  the  intensest  daily  labor,  the  clear,  per- 


THE  END  193 

petual  vigilance  of  thought,  the  great  resolve, 
tranquil  and  faithful  in  its  strength,  —  it  is  these 
things,  it  is  the  work  in  short,  the  wonderful  slow 
work  of  man  about  the  soul's  business,  which  ac 
complishes  constantly  —  as  we  both  know  so  well 

—  some  real  thing  which  makes  us,  however  grad 
ually,  other  and  nobler  and  greater  than  we  are, 
because  precisely  it  makes  us  more  than  we  are. 
All  of  which  you  know  better  than  I,  for  better 
than  I  you  do  the  work  and  reap  the  result.  But 
it's  a  truth  none  the  less  which  takes  time  to  learn 

—  if  it  is  ever  learned  at  all  —  for  the  temptation 
to  think  that  the  reward,  the  advance  is  to-morrow, 
and  that  Paradise  is  in  the  next  county,  and  that 
both  can  be  got  by  some  adventurous  extrava 
gance,  some  single,  tense  deed  of  excellence,  is  very 
great,  I  imagine,  to  us  all.  We  never  realize  quite 
at  once  that  only  patience  can  see  us  through,  and 
that  if  the  moment  is  not  eternity  and  the  place 
not  Paradise  it  must  be  just  because  we  are  busy 
about  what  is  not,  in  the  true  strict  test,  our  real 
concern. 


194        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

WASHINGTON,  2346  MASSACHUSETTS  AVE. 
(Spring,  1908). 

O!  MY  DEAR  LANGDON,  —  Your  letter  thrilled 
and  moved  me  beyond  expression.  If  I  do  not 
thank  you  for  it  it  is  because  it  has  roused  within 
me  emotions  nobler  and  more  profound  than  grati 
tude;  and  it  is  in  the  glamour  and  power  of  these 
emotions  —  which  will  remain  permanently  inter 
fused  with  all  that  I  am  —  that  I  now  write  to  you. 
I  tried  to  read  your  letter  aloud  to  B.  but  it  moved 
me  so  much  and  to  such  depths  that  I  was  unable 
to  continue.  This  may  seem  strange  to  you,  for  you 
will  not  have  thought  of  all  that  it  means  to  me; 
you  will  not  have  been  aware  of  the  bare  fact  that, 
apart  from  the  immense  inward  satisfaction  which 
the  effort  of  expression  must  always  bring,  your 
letter  is  just  all  of  real  value  I  shall  get  for  "  Hera- 
kles."  And  it  is  more,  my  dear  friend,  far  more 
than  enough!  That  is  certain.  I  speak  to  you  with 
an  open  heart  and  mind,  which  your  letter  has  lib 
erated,  restored,  revived,  nourished  and  sustained. 
You  know  as  well  as  I  how  passionately  we  have 
understanding  and  sympathy  for  what  is  best  and 


THE  END  195 

noblest  within  us.  The  conception  of  God  the 
Father,  I  believe,  came  from  this  longing  in  the 
human  heart.  But  the  habit  of  solitude  and  silence, 
which  in  this  queer  country,  we  perforce  assume, 
ends  by  making  us  less  attentive  to  the  heart's 
need,  and  it  is  only  when  we  are  fed  that  we  realize 
how  consuming  was  our  hunger.  For  all  that  is 
not  what  we  at  best  and  most  truly  are,  we  find 
recognition  enough,  but  the  very  soul  within  us  is 
like  a  solitary  stranger  in  a  strange  land  —  and 
your  letter  was  to  me  like  a  friendly  voice  speaking 
the  words  of  my  own  tongue  and  like  the  lights  of 
welcome.  It  is  perhaps  your  criticisms  that  I  re 
joice  in  most,  for  I  know  them  to  be  valid  and  just. 
I  feel  the  faults  you  find  as  you  feel  them,  I  believe; 
and  I  keep  alive  the  hope  that  I  may  learn  to  feel 
them  with  sufficient  force  and  clearness  to  correct 
them.  It  would  be  of  infinite  advantage  to  me  if 
you  would,  some  day,  go  over  the  whole  thing 
with  me  in  detail.  Nothing  could  so  much  im 
prove  my  chances  of  better  work  in  the  future. 
In  fact  it  would  be  to  me  the  most  essential  assist 
ance  that  I  could  possibly  receive;  for  if  I  had  you 


196        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

there  to  put  your  finger  on  the  dreadful  Saharas 
and  other  undeniable  shortcomings,  it  would  il 
luminate  my  understanding  as  nothing  else  could 
do.  ... 

Just  one  thing  more.  It  was  a  noble  act  of  friend 
ship  for  you  to  write  me  that  letter  amid  all  the 
labors  of  your  present  days.  Thanks  for  that  with 
all  my  heart. 

With  this  single  condition,  the  happy  life  went 
on,  filled  with  affection  and  humor  to  the  end,  as 
his  last  letters  tell:- 

TO   HIS   MOTHER 

NAHANT,  June  13,  1909. 

Our  train  was  seven  hours  late  to  Boston,  which 
fact,  when  in  the  East  River,  after  four  hours  of 
open  sea,  at  6: 30  A.  M.,  and  by  the  dull  glare  of  the 
hot  sun  through  a  white  fog,  it  first  gradually  and 
at  last  with  agonizing  completeness  possessed  my 
mind,  produced  in  that  sensitive  organ  emotions 
too  vivid  to  be  here  described. 

I  had  retired  to  rest  reconciled,  or  at  least 
steeled,  to  the  thought  of  a  two  hours'  delay  in  our 


THE  END  197 

journey;  and  when,  on  waking  (abysmal  moment!) 
in  the  squalor  of  my  berth  I  found  that  the  fog  had 
changed  the  two  hours'  delay  to  seven,  I  felt  in  the 
first  shock,  other  emotions  besides  surprise.  .  .  . 
Before  emerging  in  unwashed  squalor  from  my 
section,  I  had  determined,  however,  in  view  of 
everything,  to  suppress  my  feelings  and  to  be,  for 
my  poor  good  children  and  their  nurses,  just  the 
requisite  hope,  cheer  and  comfort  —  and  this  de 
termination  (it  was  the  one  consoling  event  of  the 
dreadful  day)  I  did,  to  the  end,  successfully  carry 
out.  Well,  when  at  last  from  that  dreadful  boat 
we  were  jerkily  drawn  once  more  onto  firm  land, 
we  fell  of  course  inevitably  into  the  mean  hands  of 
the  N.  Y.,N.H.  and  H.  R.  R.,  which  characteristi 
cally  decided  that  it  would,  of  course,  be  both 
cheaper  and  easier,  to  give  us,  instead  of  the  din 
ing  car  to  which  —  Heaven  knows  —  we  seemed 
entitled,  a  "fifteen  minutes  for  refreshments"  at 
New  Haven;  and  there,  at  ten  o'clock,  in  the  heart 
breaking,  dingy  dreadfulness  of  the  waiting-room, 
we  —  that  is  the  passengers  of  that  luckless  train 
—  thronged  four  deep  round  a  vastly  rectangular 


198        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

barrier  like  a  shop-counter,  girdled,  for  the  public, 
by  high,  greasy,  "fixed"  stools,  covered  with  in 
edible  pseudo-foods  under  fly-blown  glass  bells, 
and  defended,  so  to  speak,  by  an  insufficient  and 
driven  horde  of  waiters  and  waitresses.  You  can 
imagine  what  chance  there  was  dans  cette  galere  for 
the  babes !  Fraiilein  and  the  nurse  secured,  by  pro 
digious  exertions,  and  wonderfully  drank,  cups  of  a 
dim  grey  fluid  which  they  believed  to  be  coffee, 
while  I  and  the  children  got  back  to  the  train  with 
some  apples,  oranges,  and  sinister  sandwiches, 
which  all,  later,  and  with  every  accompanying  de 
gradation  of  drip  and  slop  and  grease,  all  mixed 
with  car  dirt,  we  did  devour,  —  to  avoid  starva 
tion.  I  was  still  further,  however,  to  be  in  a  posi 
tion  to  appreciate  the  exquisite  benefits  of  a  rail 
road  monopoly,  for  when  at  last  our  interminable 
journey  did  end  at  Boston,  we  found,  of  course,  no 
porters !  And  with  a  heavy  microscope,  book,  coat 
and  cane,  my  three  poor  unceasingly  good,  weary 
and  toy-laden  children,  and  my  two  weary  and 
child-laden  nurses,  were,  perforce,  obliged  to  leave 
our  four  bags  on  the  platform,  in  charge  of  the 


THE  END  199 

well-feed  train  porter,  to  be  immediately  "called 
for"  by  Moore's  man.  Which  man,  young  Moore 
himself,  I  duly  found  and  straitly  charged  about 
the  four  bags,  as  well  as  about  my  seven  pieces 
in  the  "van."  Then,  somewhat  cheered,  and  hav 
ing  renewed  to  Moore  (who,  as  you  will  presently 
perceive,  I  have  come  to  regard  as  an  abysmal 
though  quite  well-intentioned  young  ass)  my 
charge  as  to  the  four  bags,  I  drove  off  to  the 
North  Station,  stopping  en  route  merely  to  reward 
my  lambs  for  their  exemplary  conduct  by  a  rubber 
toy  apiece.  Well !  at  that  point,  I  think  you  will 
agree  with  me  that  the  wariest  might  have  been 
lulled  into  a  sense  that  the  worst  was  over  and 
plain  sailing  ahead.  Such  at  least  was  my  condi 
tion  of  confidence,  and  though  in  the  North  Sta 
tion  waiting-room,  our  bedraggled,  dirty,  worn- 
out  company  waited  a  full  hour  for  Moore  and 
the  trunks,  I  just  put  it  down  as  evidence  that 
the  benefits  of  the  railroad  we  had  just  left  were 
still  accumulating,  and  hoped  on.  And  then  Moore 
arrived  —  arrived,  having  just  merely  forgotten 
the  four  bags  —  having  in  short  left  them  —  one 


200        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

of  them  containing  Uncle  Henry's  manuscript  and 
all  of  mine,  both  irreplaceable  —  just  there  on  the 
platform  where  I  could  n't  have  not  left  them. 
Well!  for  a  moment  I  didn't  "keep  up"  a  bit 
and  addressed  to  Moore  a  few  —  how  inadequate! 
—  "feeling  words."  I  then  dispatched  him  back 
to  recover  the  bags,  packed  my  poor  babes  into 
the  3: 20  for  Lynn,  —  trusting,  as  I  had  to,  to 
Fraiilein's  ability  to  get  them  out  at  Lynn,  —  and 
remained  myself  at  the  North  Station,  where  I 
waited  for  Moore  for  exactly  one  hour  and  fifteen 
minutes.  My  state  of  mind  I  won't  describe.  At 
the  end  of  that  vigil,  however,  I  mounted  —  al 
ways  with  microscope,  book,  coat  and  cane  —  in  a 
taxicab,  went  to  the  South  Station,  found  Moore, 
and  after  an  interval  of  almost  panic,  when  I 
thought  all  the  manuscripts  were  lost  for  good, 
did,  by  dint  of  energy  at  last  —  thank  Heaven  — 
find  the  bags.  .  .  .  Well !  I  felt  then  a  little  "gone" 
and  went  therefore  to  the  Club,  had  a  drink  and  a 
sandwich,  just  in  time,  and  got,  at  last,  to  Nahant, 
at  about  seven  o'clock,  to  find  that,  by  some  mis 
take,  they  had  given  me,  for  the  nurse's  bag,  the 


THE  END  201 

bag  of  a  total  stranger.  In  the  nurse's  bag  was, 
beside  her  own  effects,  some  of  Helena's,  includ 
ing  a  silver  mug;  and  so  as  I  lay,  at  last,  in  my 
bath  I  heard,  strangely  concordant  with  my  whole 
horrible  day's  experience,  Fraiilein  and  Hedwig 
mourning,  in  shrill  German,  the  loss.  So  Mon 
day,  I  go  to  town  to  do  some  errands  and  to  find  if 
possible  the  damned  bag.  The  children  are  none 
the  worse  for  the  journey  and  are  already  bene 
fited  by  the  good  air.  The  house  is  incredibly  clean 
and  charming  and  we  are  delighted  with  it. 

TUCKANUCK,  July,  1909. 

I  am  having  the  most  beautiful  days  —  endless 
air  and  sea  and  sun  and  beauty,  and  best  of 
all  with  Langdon's  splendid  companionship.  It's 
all  just  what  I've  wanted  and  needed  for  so 
long.  I  have  shown  Langdon  my  latest  work,  — 
"The  Noctambulist,"  etc.,  —  what  I  read  to  you 
in  Washington,  —  and  he  is  most  splendidly  en 
couraging.  He  feels  as  strongly  as  I  could  wish 
that  I  have  made,  both  in  thought  and  form,  a 
really  new  and  large  and  valid  departure.  Which 


202        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

endlessly  cheers  me,  as  you  will  believe.  We  talk 
together  of  everything  first  and  last,  off  and  on, 
but  chiefly  on,  all  day  and  night  with  the  exception 
of  many  hours  of  sleep.  I  do  no  work  and  just 
take  easily  all  my  present  blessings  as  greedily 
as  I  can. 

Langdon  Mitchell  was  one  of  the  half-dozen 
readers,  as  he  said,  for  whose  approbation  he 
wrote,  and  this  last  companionship  with  him  at 
Tuckanuck  in  July,  gave  Lodge  keen  pleasure. 
On  returning  to  Nahant  he  wrote  to  Sturgis  Bige- 
low,  who  was  then  ill  in  Paris :  — 

"  I  Ve  just  returned  home  from  Tuckanuck, 
browned  to  the  most  beautiful  color  by  ten  glorious 
days  of  sun.  Langdon  and  I  went  together,  and  ex 
cept  for  one  day  of  warm,  sweet  rain,  and  one  morn 
ing  of  fog, — which  cleared  splendidly  in  time  for 
the  bath, — we  had  weather  of  uninterrupted  mag 
nificence.  Immeasurable  sky  and  sea  and  sun,  warm 
water,  hot  clean  sand,  clear  light,  transparent  air, 
—  Tuckanuck  at  its  perfect  best.  I've  returned 
made  over  in  mind  and  body,  feeling  better  in 


THE  END  203 

every  way  than  I've  felt  since  I  can  remember. 
For  this  I  have  to  thank  you,  for  Tuckanuck,  — 
and  Langdon  for  his  wonderful,  interesting,  vital 
companionship.  Together  —  with  every  variety 
of  the  best  talk,  the  finest  communion — we  lived 
all  day  and  night  long  immersed  in  the  beneficent 
elements,  the  prodigious  light  and  air,  the  sounding, 
sparkling,  flowing  sea;  and  the  bathing  was  dif 
ferent  and  better  every  day.  The  sea  showed  us 
all  its  loveliest  moods.  On  one  day  it  was  stretched 
and  smooth  to  the  horizon,  drawn  away  from  the 
shore,  on  a  light  north  wind,  in  endless  fine  blue 
wrinkles,  with  just  the  merest  crisp,  small  ripple 
on  the  beach.  Another  day,  fresh  southwest  wind, 
with  a  fine,  high,  lively,  light  surf.  And  even  on 
one  day  the  biggest  waves  of  the  season  —  too 
big  for  comfort.  Well!  it  was  all  glorious;  — you 
will  understand;  we  have  had  it  just  like  that  so 
often  together.  Indeed  your  presence  was  the  one 
thing  we  longed  for,  and  did  n't  have,  throughout 
our  whole  visit.  There  was  hardly  an  hour  down 
there  when  I  did  n't  think  of  you  and  long  for  you. 
.  Never  had  I  more  needed  the  restorative 


204  GEORGE   CABOT  LODGE 

magic  of  nature  and  companionship  than  when 
I  set  forth  for  that  blessed  island,  and  never  did  it 
more  wonderfully  work  upon  me  its  beneficent 
spell.  To  judge  by  the  way  I  feel  now,  I  have  n't 
known  what  it  was  to  be  really  rested  and  well 
since  I  finished  'Herakles.'  I  feel  pages  more  of 
enthusiasm  at  the  end  of  my  pen,  but  I  will  spare 
you.  I  took  down  to  the  island  with  me  my  win 
ter's  work,  which  has  taken  the  shape  of  a  volume 
of  poems  ready  for  publication,  and  read  it  to 
Langdon,  who,  thank  goodness,  felt  high  praise 
for  them  —  more  enthusiastic  approval,  indeed, 
than  I  had  dared  to  hope  for." 

Langdon  Mitchell's  encouragement  and  sym 
pathy  were  pathetically  grateful  to  him,  so  rare 
was  the  voice  of  an  impartial  and  competent  judge. 
He  wrote  to  his  wife  in  the  warmest  appreciation 
of  it. 

1"  I  have  been  having  such  good  days !  Langdon 
is  of  course  the  utmost  delight  to  me,  and  the 
presence  of  companionship  day  by  day  is  fresh 
and  wonderful  to  me  beyond  measure.  Also  the 
weather  in  general  has  been  glorious,  and  the  whole 


THE  END  205 

spectacle  of  the  world  clothed  in  light  and  beauty. 
I  lead  a  sane  and  hygienic  life.  We  go  to  bed  before 
twelve,  and  sleep  all  we  can.  We  breakfast,  read, 
write  perhaps  an  occasional  letter,  talk  for  long, 
fine,  clear  stretches  of  thought,  and  regardless  of 
time,  play  silly  but  active  games  on  the  grass, 
swim,  bask  in  the  sun,  sail,  and  talk,  and  read 
aloud,  and  read  to  ourselves,  and  talk,  and  talk. 
.  .  .  I'm  getting  into  splendid  condition." 

When  his  father,  fagged  by  the  long  fatigues  of 
the  tariff  session,  returned  north,  they  went  back 
to  Tuckanuck  together  in  August,  and  there  he 
had  the  pleasure  of  a  visit  from  a  new  and  enthu 
siastic  admirer,  Mr.  Alfred  Brown,  lecturer  and 
critic,  who  brought  him  for  the  first  time  a  sense 
of  possible  appreciation  beyond  his  personal 
friends. 

He  never  alluded  to  his  own  symptoms.  Even 
his  father,  though  on  the  watch,  noticed  only  that 
he  spared  himself,  and  took  more  frequent  rests. 
To  Sturgis  Bigelow  he  wrote  of  his  anxiety  about 
both  Bigelow  and  his  father,  whom,  he  said,  he 
was  helping  to  "get  his  much-needed  rest  and  re- 


206        GEORGE  CABOT  LODGE 

cuperation,  and  I  think  he  is  getting  them,  both, 
good  and  plenty,  but  the  knowledge  that  you  will 
probably  not  get  here  this  season  makes  the  dear 
island  seem  singularly  deserted.  ...  It's  all  do 
ing  him  good,  and  what  is  more,  he  thinks  it  is. 
...  I  read  a  good  deal,  and  take  my  swim,  and 
an  occasional  sail.  Also,  after  a  month's  vacation 
during  which  I  have  n't  written  a  line,  I ' ve  now 
begun  again,5  and  write  and  meditate  for  four 
or  five  hours  every  day  ...  so  that  life  flows 
evenly  and  quietly  and  cheerfully.  Still,  lacking 
the  stimulus  of  your  prospective  arrival,  I  shan't 
be  sorry  to  get  back  to  my  Pussy  and  my  babes." 
This  seems  to  have  been  one  of  the  last  letters 
he  wrote.  It  was  mailed  at  Nantucket,  August  18, 
and  on  the  19th  he  was  seized  at  night  by  violent 
indigestion,  probably  due  to  some  ptomaine  poison. 
The  next  day  he  was  better.  The  distress  re 
turned  on  the  night  of  the  twentieth.  Twenty- 
four  hours  of  suffering  ensued  ;  then  the  heart 
suddenly  failed  and  the  end  came. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U   .    S    .   A 


RETURN     CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 
TO-—H^      202  Main  Library 

LOAN  PERIOD  1 
HOME  USE 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 

1  -month  loans  may  be  renewed  by  calling  642-3405 

6-month  loans  may  be  recharged  by  bringing  books  to  Circulation  Desk 

Renewals  and  recharges  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  due  date 

DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 


HIM  1  fi  7002 

%JUrl  i  O  tuut. 

L   ffl            MAD     1     4i 

!9ft? 

Rtro    MAK  i  * 

JUN  41987    ' 

A  1 

Q07 

•i'ScNlfVf  *° 

JJOi 

JAN  04  1994 

AUTv 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELEY 
FORM  NO.  DD6,  60m,  3/80          BERKELEY,  CA  94720 

®s 


» u 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 
II  III  I  III  I II II 

BDD1D2MDDT 


